Labor Day Weekend Cleanup

Happy Labor Day Weekend, friends! What a lovely summer it has been. This weekend, I made a decision to wake up early at least one day and get myself to the beach before the badge checkers to do a little beach cleaning. I was so grateful to have my dad join me this morning at Shelter Cover, NJ, a bayside beach.

We got to the beach around 8:30 which only gave us approximately 30 minutes to get our clean on. While we were pleasantly surprised by how clean the beach appeared (compared to our typical clean at that beach the day after Thanksgiving), we still managed to collect 257 pieces of trash in that short 30 minutes. All of which were able to fit into one small trash bag which only means there are many other parts of this trash floating around somewhere else.

Since there weren't too many big pieces, we decided to collect all of our trash in one bag and sort it later. After sorting it back home, I quickly realized that the recyclable count was significantly lower than that of the regular trash. My mom did the honor of tallying up the pieces of trash while I sorted and I've included a summarized breakdown for you below. 

Have you done any cleanups lately? If not, head out this weekend and see what you find. In a short 30 minutes, you'll be surprised how much of a difference you can make in your neighborhood!

- jamie

• Cigarettes: 125 + 1 box
• Plastic pieces: 50
• Paper pieces: 25
• Styrofoam pieces: 24
• Snack wrappers: 16
• Glass pieces: 2
• Miscellaneous: feminine products (3), balloons (2), sock, kids toy, lip balm, swimmers nose plug, bouncy ball, deodorant cap, band-aid, metal bottle cap, Ortley beach badge

TOTAL: 257 pieces of trash

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