Volunteers from ShopRite gathered together to form a beach sweep team for COA’s annual Beach Sweeps. (Photo: Wakefern Corp.)
Beach sweeps in local Shore communities, led by environmental advocacy group Clean Ocean Action, will take place this Saturday after being previously postponed due to foul weather.
The 38th bi-annual beach sweeps take place in 48 towns, including several local communities. Lavallette, historically, attracts one of the largest contingents. During the beach sweeps, “volunteers from the small to the tall and including hundreds of groups, schools, scout troops, and businesses gather to give back to the ocean and show Jersey pride for the coast,” COA said.
The beach sweeps are also a valuable exercise in data collection, as refuse collected is logged into a spreadsheet and later examined in order to calculate which items are most likely to be improperly disposed-of, and policies can be created to keep litter from accumulating in the future.
The beach sweeps this year will be held Saturday, April 15, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Information on how to volunteer, and a list of local towns where sweeps will take place, can be found on the COA website’s interactive map. Locally, sweeps will be held at Brown’s Woods Preserve on the mainland in Toms River, Ocean Gate, two locations in Brick, Normandy Beach, Lavallette, Ortley Beach, Seaside Heights, two locations in Seaside Park, Midway Beach in South Seaside Park, and Island Beach State Park.
