By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Brian and Lily Razzi and their 13-year-old son, Dillon, looked inside the large trash bag they were toting around and started naming the assorted trash and litter they had plucked off Sea Isle City’s beaches.
“We found can lids, old beer bottles, rope and a lot of cigarette butts,” Brian Razzi said.
After a short pause, his wife added: “Look at this. It’s full.”
Lily Razzi then held up an unopened bottle of Corona beer that someone had, for some reason she couldn’t quite fathom, discarded on the beach.
With a smile, she assured that she had no intention of drinking the beer.
The Razzis were among nearly 200 environmentally conscious volunteers who fanned out on Sea Isle’s beaches and sand dunes along the entire length of the barrier island – from First Street to 93rd Street – to clean up the shoreline Saturday.
The annual event, organized by Sea Isle’s Environmental Commission in partnership with the state group Clean Ocean Action, traditionally attracts families, community organizations, school groups and other volunteers who simply want to protect the environment.
“The people who come out to do this either live here, vacation here or visit here and they want to take care of the environmental to make sure it’s not messy,” said Annette Lombardo, who chairs the Environmental Commission.
Lombardo stressed the importance of keeping the dunes, beaches and ocean as clean as possible – especially in a town that wants to look spotless when throngs of vacationers arrive for the summer season beginning Memorial Day weekend.
“If you have a messy house, people don’t want to come over,” she said.
Beach sweeps are held in Sea Isle twice a year, in the spring and fall. Sea Isle has been holding the beach cleanups for more than 30 years. On Saturday, 192 volunteers showed up to set a new record turnout for the fall event, Lombardo said.
“This helps our future. It helps our children,” she noted of the community’s commitment to the environment.
The Environmental Commission plans to compile a report later on that will detail the types of litter that were picked up and the amount. Virtually every year some unusual, it not bizarre, items are found. Lombardo said there was a discarded toilet one year.
Along with the full bottle of Corona beer, cigarette butts and other types of trash, Brian, Lily and Dillon Razzi also found a 16-foot-long fiberglass pole.
The Razzis, who live in Marlton, N.J., and have a Sea Isle vacation home on 42nd Street, said they want to help keep their favorite beach clean.
“The biggest and most important part of the cleanup for us is that we’re on this beach a lot. There’s no better way to give back to the community than to clean up the beach,” Brian Razzi said of their home beach at 42nd Street.
Two other volunteers, Tom and Carolyn Caruso, said they were inspired by their environmentally conscious daughter, Nicole, to take part in the beach cleanup. Nicole, a freshman at West Chester University, is trying to establish a sustainability program at the college, they noted.
The Carusos live in Chester Springs, Pa., and have a vacation home in Sea Isle on 37th Street. Wearing rubber gloves and carrying a trash bag, they methodically moved through the dunes while picking up litter.
“Let’s see, there are cigarette butts, bottle cups, plastic cups and plastic straws,” Carolyn Caruso said.
“And plastic bags,” her husband added.
Volunteers also planted dune grass during the beach cleanup. One of them, Dave Vanderslice, filled in bare spots in the dunes at 44th Street.
Vanderslice, a Pitman, N.J., resident who has a vacation condo at 44th Street, poked holes in the dunes using the pointy tip of a beach umbrella. A shovel creates holes that are too wide for planting dune grass, so he prefers the beach umbrella, he said.
“The holes are 10 inches deep. I Googled it to look it up,” Vanderslice said with a laugh while explaining how he knows so much about planting dune grass.
Vanderslice and his wife, Claudia, carry a bag with them every time they take a walk on Sea Isle’s beaches so they can pick up litter along the way.
“We have to protect everything we can in the environment. We want to keep it looking nice,” Vanderslice said.
After the cleanup, the volunteers were treated to a free lunch buffet at Mike’s Seafood & Dock Restaurant, the bayside eatery on Park Road. Mike Monichetti, the owner of Mike’s Seafood, and his family have sponsored the buffet for 12 years.
The buffet has proved to be a popular way of attracting more volunteers to the beach cleanup. Prior to the buffet being started, the beach sweep would usually draw only 40 to 60 people, but now averages 250 volunteers for the spring cleanup and more than 100 in the fall, organizers said.
