It may be beach season, but that doesn’t mean you should just sit on the sand with a pina colada stuck up your nose. Instead, why not take the time to get involved and help clean up the local community?
Coming up September 15 is the nation’s biggest cleanup event, the International Coastal Cleanup. The Ocean Conservancy brings together communities all over the country to clean up debris on our coasts, bays and rivers.
The idea is to pick up all the trash and debris, and record everything you pick up so it can be analyzed for further research.
You can find Coastal Cleanup events all the way from California to Maine. And it really makes a difference. In California alone, one day of cleanup removed more than 1 million pounds of human-made debris.
The Alliance for the Great Lakes has an ongoing Adopt-a-Beach program. You can join existing teams, or create your own team, to remove litter on the shores of the Great Lakes, and fill out the data online for analysis.
And if you prefer to get off the beach and into the water, look for Project Aware‘s underwater programs. As long as you’re a certified diver, you can participate in underwater cleanups all over the world.
For more information, visit the Eco-Travel archives.
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