10-11 tons of trash removed from Delaware beaches every day

Long before sunrise and the arrival of the beach crowds, Mike Peterman and his street crew hit Rehoboth Beach, emptying dozens of trash cans and sweeping away yesterday's detritus using a machine that sifts stray rubbish from the sand, a giant vacuum cleaner that sweeps the boardwalk, push brooms and garbage trucks.

"That is seven days a week," said Peterman, supervisor of the city's Streets Department.

Peterman said they collect about 10 to 11 tons of trash just from the beach and boardwalk every day. There's more in the residential and commercial areas.

The constant attention to keeping the beaches, boardwalk and streets clean makes for a more attractive resort community but it also keeps trash from reaching Rehoboth's crown jewel: the ocean.

Delaware's beach towns are consistently recognized as having the highest water quality in the country. Rehoboth and Dewey regularly achieve "Superstar" status by the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that rates all the nation's beaches. Only a handful of towns achieve that status.

When trash gets into the ocean, it breaks down into tiny pieces -- about the size of a sesame seed -- that can linger for many years.

Rehoboth provides dozens of trash cans along the beach and boardwalk -- each of which are emptied every day; some even more.

But that isn't enough.

Some people are careless about disposing of trash and the wind blows food wrappers and other items around. Peterman's nemesis are pizza boxes. Nothing fills a trash can faster and sends it overflowing. That means he has to send crews out throughout the day and into the evening to empty trash cans.

Still, by sunrise during the peak season of July and August, they are overflowing again.

At Delaware's coastal state parks, there is a different strategy. What visitors carry in, they must carry out. There are no waste cans.

Doug Long, Delaware Seashore State Park superintendent, said he was a skeptic of the no trash can approach at first.

Before 1994, "we had a trash barrel every 50-feet" and 10 people worked full time to empty them throughout the day. "They were always overflowing," he said. Often, people were bringing their household trash to the beach and dumping that in the bins, too.

These days a beach rake cleans up the bits and pieces of trash left behind in the sand once a week. There are no trash cans to empty.

"The beaches seem cleaner," Long said.

Municipal  and state efforts have paid off in Delaware. Each year in September the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control organizes an annual beach cleanup. In 1999, volunteers collected 10 tons of trash from beaches throughout the state. Last year, they picked up 7.8 tons of which 2 tons were recyclables.

Scientists estimated in a 2015 study that in one year -- 2010 -- from 960 million to 2.5 billion pounds of plastic waste reached the ocean.

But now, Tobias Kukulka, a physical oceanographer at the University of Delaware, found that the amount of plastic in the ocean may be even greater.

Trash -- much of it plastic -- reaches oceans from land, from streams, rivers and bays and from ships. Some of it is windblown. Some of it floats. Plastic trash breaks down over time and eventually turns into those tiny bits that float and drift near the surface. Fish, birds and marine mammals and sea turtles mistake these small fragments for food.

“You have stuff that’s potentially poisonous in the ocean and there is some indication that it’s harmful to the environment, but scientists don’t really understand the scope of this problem yet,” said Kukulka, who studies ocean waves and currents and  is an associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment’s School of Marine Science and Policy.

Kukulka wanted to get a better picture of the extent of the ocean plastic problem. Typically, scientists tow a plankton net over a few miles and count the plastic fragments they collect, he said.

But Kukulka said that may not offer a complete picture because ocean turbulence carries these particles to lower depths in the ocean where they wouldn't be captured by the traditional method of measuring them using a plankton net.

“My research has shown that ocean turbulence actually mixes plastics and other pollutants down into the water column despite their buoyancy,” Kukulka said. “This means that surface measurements could be wildly off and the concentration of plastic in the marine environment may be significantly higher than we thought.”

Kukulka said ocean waves cause turbulence and that tends to mix things up at the surface -- that can be plastic particles or plankton or even oils from a spill.

The plastic research is important because it helps scientists better understand how small scale mixing effects the movement of small particles in the water column.

"The plastics pieces are an emerging problem." he said. But they may also help scientists better understand other oceanographic questions.

“Broadly, these plastics pieces can be used as a physical tracer to help answer bigger questions about ocean processes and their implications for other ocean pollutants,” he said.

For instance, they could help researchers better understand what happens during an oil spill or allow them to understand plankton movement, he said.

Kukulka worked with other scientists at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and at the University of Washington, using computer modeling to look at the effect of waves, of heating and cooling at the ocean surface and the way each influenced where plastic fragments were found.

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He discovered that the turbulence from ocean waves and currents play a role in whether plastic trash stays at the surface or is dispersed deeper.

He also found that during the summer, as the top layer of the ocean surface is warmed by the sun, the plastic tends to be trapped at the surface. But as that upper layer cools, water density increases and the plastics sink.

“If we really want to go after this problem and quantify the amount of plastics in the ocean and think about distribution and impact, then we need to keep in mind that turbulence is influenced by heating and, therefore, the distribution of plastics is, too,” Kukulka said.

That is why in places like Rehoboth Beach, city crews work so hard to make sure plastic and other debris never gets to the ocean.

Peterman brings on 12 seasonal workers to help with the load, day after day, during the three-month summer season.

They start at around 4 a.m. to avoid the crowds.

"We get a lot of people who like to watch the sunrise," he said. By starting early, the beach sweeper -- actually a rake that sifts debris from the sand and is pulled by a tractor -- "that gives them more open area to clean."

There are trash cans to empty -- often filled to the brim or overflowing. One staffer uses an old-fashioned push broom to sweep the litter into a pile, another comes along with a trash pick and still another operates a powered, mechanical push sweeper that sucks up anything that's left.

The trash is neverending.

"It's a hard job," he said.

Reach Molly Murray at (302) 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.

INFO BOX TO FOLLOW

Ten Ways to Reduce Plastic Pollution

The Natural Resources Defense Council has these tips for people who want to reduce plastic pollution

1. Wean yourself off disposable plastics

We all use them, grocery bags, plastic wrap, straws, to-go cups. Replace them with reusable items like a travel mug or reusable grocery bags.

2. Stop buying bottled water

Some 20 billion plastic bottles are discarded each year. Instead, carry a reusable bottle. You can buy water bottles with a built in filter if water quality is a concern.

3. Don't buy products with microbeads

These are tiny plastic particles found in everything from face and body scrubs to toothpaste. They slip through wastewater treatment plants and look like food to some marine life. Oatmeal, sugar and salt are natural exfoliants.

4. Cook more

Or, if you eat out or order takeout, provide your own, reusable containers.

5. Purchase items secondhand.

Avoid all the packaging from new products by searching thrift shops, garage sales and on-line sites that list resales.

6. Recycle 

In Delaware most plastic -- but not all -- can be recycled. Here's a link to the authority's recycling guidelines. http://dswa.com/residential-recycling-guidelines/

7. Support a bag tax or ban.

Delaware lawmakers considered HB 202 this session that required retailers charge a 5-cent fee to consumers for plastic bags. The bill made it out of committee but didn't make it through the legislature. Some  2,777 plastic bags were collected on Delaware’s coastal beaches during the 2014 International Coastal Cleanup Day. Plastic bags were the second most common item collected bested only by cigarette butts.

8. Buy in bulk.

Single-serving containers add up to more packaging and they typically cost more. Buy in bulk and divide into single-serve portions in reusable containers.

9. Bring your own garment bag to the dry cleaner.

Take your own zippered fabric bag and ask that your cleaning be returned in it instead of plastic bags.

10. Put pressure on manufacturers.

Ask companies to use less packaging to help reduce waste.