Coastal cleanup becomes a habit, not an event

Living on Delaware’s coastline for a good chunk of his life, 58-year-old William McSpadden has seen its beauty along with its ugliness.

Some of the ugliness includes sea creatures tangled up in discarded trash or birds that mistake rubbish for food. Once, McSpadden, who lives in Slaughter Beach, found a horseshoe crab that had been hooked and was dragging the line and reel. It was not a pleasant sight.

These days, though, he's encouraged by an increasing number of people, especially young people, who are taking the time to make sure the state's coast and waterways are kept clean.

“One of the best things that I’ve seen is a lot more people doing the same thing,” he said. “And this is not just one day a year, these are residents that are going out on the beach and walking and picking it up every time they walk.”

McSpadden believes programs such as the annual Delaware Coastal Cleanup, which draws volunteers to help clean up the state's coastline, rivers and streams, has helped educate people on the importance of keeping the waterways free of trash and debris. The cleanup, going on this Saturday, expects to draw about 1,900 community volunteers to participate in the event – now in it's 29th year.

Boy Scout troops, 4-H Club members, businesses, families and individuals all take part, said Joanna Wilson, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

"It's one of our larger outreach events that we do every year," she said. "The importance of this event is to raise public awareness about the importance of proper trash disposal, about recycling and about the vital importance of keeping some of our beautiful natural areas clean and free of trash."

While coastal volunteers are required to pre-register, in order to balance the right amount of participants to each location, Wilson said they can volunteer for other cleanup efforts throughout the year, as well as pick up trash when they see it.

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"Every day should be a day when we can we make a difference," she said. "We pick up trash if we see it on a wildlife area, on a beach, on one of our beautiful natural places here in Delaware.

"It's not just one day a year," she said.

The Delaware event runs in conjunction with the 2016 International Coastal Cleanup campaign, sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental advocacy group that helps formulate ocean policy at the federal and state government levels.

The international campaign, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, had 800,000 participants last year collecting more than 18 million pounds of trash worldwide.

The resulting item-by-item, location-by-location Ocean Trash Index that Ocean Conservancy compiles each year provides the only global snapshot of marine debris littering coasts and waterways around the world, according to its website.

DNREC asks volunteers to fill out data cards on what they find, which is then passed on to the Ocean Conservancy.

"They use the data that we collect to help pinpoint sources of trash and attempt to make a difference in terms of lessening the amount of trash from the sources," Wilson said.

Just how the cleanup has affected litterers' behavior is questionable, but it's worth cleaning it up.

One beach municipality used Coastal Cleanup cigarette butt numbers to help support enacting a smoking ban. Those numbers went down after the ban, she said.

"Overall, I’d say we make a difference every year by cleaning up trash, especially at smaller sites such as the bay beaches and wildlife areas where there is no municipal cleanup," she said. "We also are keeping trash from washing out into the river, bay and ocean by removing it from the beaches."

Judging by the number of calls Wilson said she now gets about the September cleanup, she believes the outreach efforts have been successful in making coastal cleanup something residents think about more than one day a year.

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"And that makes a real difference in public awareness," she said.

McSpadden, who has participated in the program for about two decades, said he's thankful for what the effort teaches.

"You get people out and it's kind of an educational thing," he said. "We're not just picking up trash to make the beach look clean. The main purpose of this is to pick up trash to keep it from blowing back out to the water and harm marine life. That's especially important to McSpadden, who lives in Slaughter Beach – a horseshoe crab sanctuary. The crabs spawn on the beach, laying eggs that shorebirds feed off during their journey to the Arctic or South America.

“I imagine that it’s hard for a shorebird to differentiate between a small piece of green plastic and horseshoe crab eggs," he said. “So the more we can do that, the better off we are to keep these places clean.”

For Mike Costello, a resident of Kitts Hummock, the effort helped raise his interest in keeping the environment clean.

Castello was invited to a cookout the community organizes around the cleanup.

"I'd moved from downtown Dover and didn't really understand what it was," he said. "But boy, when I saw the people and all my neighbors and they're out there picking up litter and trash, now I'm the president of our association."

Castello believes people care more about keeping things clean when they see pristine land and that's a way the cleanup effort helped educate him.

"If you come to a place that's neat and clean, you're going to try to leave it neat and clean," he said. "I wasn't a litter bug, but I wasn't one of these people that went out and cleaned up litter," he said. "But now living here, it's part of our life."

Contact Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299, eparra@delawareonline.com or Twitter @eparra3.