Volunteers remove litter from the beaches and dunes during the community cleanup on Oct. 12, 2024. (Photos courtesy of Sea Isle City)
Some promising trends emerged from the most recent communitywide cleanup of Sea Isle City’s beaches and dunes in the fall.
Most notably, the total amount of trash and debris collected during the cleanup on Oct. 12, 2024, continued to steadily decline compared to recent years, according to a newly released report by Sea Isle’s Environmental Commission.
Also, the amount of discarded plastic items, including bags, foam containers, straws, bottles, food wrappers, caps, lids and cigarette filters, also continued to drop compared to the same type of junk found on the beaches and dunes in recent years, the report showed.
“The overall decline can be attributed to New Jersey’s May 4, 2022, state law, which prohibits retail and grocery stores, as well as food service businesses, from offering or selling single-use plastic carryout bags and polystyrene foam food service items,” the report said.
In addition, a statewide smoking ban that took effect Jan. 1, 2019, at New Jersey beaches and parks is significantly reducing the number of cigarette butts littering Sea Isle’s shoreline, the report also concluded.
The state gave shore communities the discretion in 2019 to either ban smoking altogether or designate small areas where beachgoers could still light up. Sea Isle imposed a complete smoking ban on its beaches.
“The Sea Isle City Environmental Commission will continue monitoring beach clean-up data to evaluate the ongoing effectiveness of the smoking ban and its role in reducing cigarette filter pollution on the city’s beaches,” the report says.
Overall, there were 2,639 pieces of trash and debris removed from the beaches and dunes on Oct. 12, 2024. That amount was significantly lower, for instance, than the 6,580 pieces of trash collected during a beach cleanup in October 2018 and 8,615 in October 2019.
Plastics remain the biggest source of litter, accounting for 61 percent of all the hodgepodge of trash removed from the beaches and dunes on Oct. 12, 2024.
However, the amount of plastic trash continues to decline when compared to recent years. In the Oct. 12, 2024, cleanup, 1,629 pieces of plastic were picked up, a far smaller amount than the 5,197 during the October 2018 cleanup and 6,928 in October 2019, the report pointed out.
Members of the Sea Isle City Environmental Commission hand out trash bags to volunteers.Trash made of metal, including discarded soda and beer cans, was Sea Isle’s second-biggest source of pollution at 23 percent. Paper products came in at a distant third at about 5 percent during the Oct. 12, 2024, cleanup.
Wood, glass, balloons and discarded rubber were among other types of trash that were picked up from Sea Isle’s shoreline.
The report was written by Sea Isle Environmental Commission volunteer Maria Andrews, the associate director of Undergraduate Programs, Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
It includes written comments from some of the volunteers who participated in the beach cleanup. The comments indicated an array of opinions about the overall condition of Sea Isle’s beaches.
“Much cleaner than the last cleanup,” one volunteer wrote.
“A lot of alcohol, beer, cigarettes, rope, balloon ties,” another said.
“Main beach was clean overall, but dune area had a fair amount of trash,” still another volunteer wrote.
“Innumerable white plastic fragments of ribbon-like pieces,” according to another volunteer.
Using data cards, the volunteers catalog the types and amounts of trash and debris they find. The information is sent to the environmental group Clean Ocean Action as part of a statewide database from beach cleanups at shore towns across New Jersey.
Sea Isle usually holds beach cleanups twice a year, in April for the spring and October for the fall.
The total amount of trash and debris removed from the beaches and dunes has been falling in recent years.
