Beach Clean Up is a TOP 10 Activity!
According to the National Ocean Service, volunteering to clean up our beaches is one of the Top 10 things you can do to help our Gulf of Mexico. And helping our Gulf, helps all of us because our oceans are the greatest partner we have in fighting climate change - they are our largest carbon sink and heat sink - and preserving marine habitats that humans depend upon.
You can join KLM staff at Beach Clean Up once a month. If you’d like to Volunteer, just contact us. It’s a fun “team sport” with the immediate satisfaction of seeing a pristine beach after your efforts.
Photos from KLM’s 15 August 2023 Beach Clean Up
Today, our KLM staff and volunteers, led by Cecilia Fischer, performed a more intensive cleaning of beach La Negrita. Since our July beach clean-up, we can see that the volume of trash has decreased (good news) but the number of pieces of trash that are under 5mm is very high, which requires more dexterity during collection. Thank goodness we have a good team.
We have about 14 different species of birds visiting this wetland and its very uplifting to find more seashells than trash. A very nice change over. And FONATUR is now helping too. Thank you to our team and volunteers! And a big shout out to FONATUR for helping us with our cleanup and to the State & Municipal Police for their support!
The recycling of beach trash does not end once we put it in the garbage bag. Linda Ramirez has become a constant volunteer who is talented and efficient at dividing minute trash (5mm and under) into 18 categories so it can be recycled. Not all of it is easy to identify, such as mutated and highly toxic cigarette butts. We are so grateful to have Linda as part of our team!
In addition to recycling and preserving our beaches, this type of deep cleansing of the most popular beaches also helps us learn:
What is being dumped;
Whether the number and locations of trash cans placed by ZOFEMAT are sufficient; and
If the beach cleaning provided by ZOFEMAT’s crew is sufficient for the volume of trash.
Below is a good motto to live by when visiting the beach. :)
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash