TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. (WTOC) – After the party comes the cleanup. That’s exactly what dozens of Tybee Clean Beach volunteers were out doing Friday morning after Thursday night’s Fourth of July celebration.
Clean Beach volunteer Tim Arnold says 90 percent of what they find is plastic. He says Friday alone, they found everything from plastic bottles and straws, to aluminum cans, and even hair weave on the beach. He says since the tides are big on Tybee, if they don’t pick up the trash in a timely fashion, it will get swept into the ocean.
Arnold says their main focus was debris from the fireworks, but they found much more than that.
“Wow, with cigarette butts this morning. It’s a ‘wow’ every Sunday when we go out and do it, but this time you can look at the bucket. We estimate that we have about 6,000 cigarette butts, and remember, we went out Sunday night and did it, so that’s 6,000 cigarette butts that just volunteers picked up this morning in a very small area, so the beach is being used as an ashtray by too many smokers. The one plea we have is to just hang onto that butt and use the bin. Don’t throw it on the sand. When it gets wet, it leaches all the toxins that are trapped in the filter and it’s just bad for marine life.”
Arnold says they clean the beach every Sunday and are always looking for volunteers.
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