Volunteers Pitch In To Clean Up Local Beaches

Beaches up and down the coast and around the world are a lot cleaner this weekend.

It’s all thanks to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who took part in “Coastal Cleanup Day” on Saturday.

Along Santa Barbara County beaches people collected cigarette butts, pieces of plastic, bottle caps, fishing lines, and more.

They spent hours picking up trash and debris at 39 beaches in the county.

Volunteers also spent time cleaning up creeks, lakes and parks.

“Today is coastal cleanup day. This is where we live this is our home. All one has to do is see that film about the island floating around in the pacific covered with plastic and garbage and think about the birds ingesting it and the fish and all the animals and the fact that there is no need for this,” said Santa Barbara resident Lisa Moreno.

Besides picking up the trash, volunteers counted, sorted and documented what they found.

The information will be sent to the Coastal Conservancy database and will help craft new legislation to protect the ocean and waterways.

“So we’re literally counting the number of pieces of plastic, counting the number of cigarette butts, and counting the number of straws that we find,” said Jackie Hunt, Captain of the East Beach cleanup.

Last year, in Santa Barbara alone, approximately 1,000 volunteers collected close to 2,000 pounds of trash and over 600 pounds of recyclables.