International Coastal Cleanups around the world – California Coastal Cleanup Day

California’s Coastal Cleanup Day is probably the most populous effort in the world. Two of the Raffles Museum Toddycats! and ICCS alumni Wei Song and Danwei are in California now for their graduate studies and both joined one of more than 700 cleanup sites in their state to contribute to the global International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) dataset. If you have Wei Song on Facebook, you can view his album of photos from the Bolsa Chica Saltmarsh.

So it was not just beaches and mangroves in Singapore. Around the world as the sun rises, people have been hitting the shores:

“Car Parts to Fishing Line, International Coastal Clean-up Bags It All.” Environment New Service, 14 Sep 2007.

WASHINGTON, DC – Some 450,000 trash bags have been distributed free of cost around the United States, and when Saturday evening rolls around, the Ocean Conservancy hopes they will all be full of trash.

Ocean Conservancy’s International Coast Cleanup is the world’s largest single-day volunteer effort to improve the health of the ocean and its wildlife. On Saturday, the organization will hold its 22nd annual cleanup, which now has become worldwide event.

This year the Ocean Conservancy anticipates that 500,000 volunteers will turn out to collect debris and document what they find along shorelines and underwater in 100 countries. This makes the International Coastal Cleanup the largest single-day volunteer effort focused on cleaning up and conserving the marine environment.