Treasure Island beach cleanup: Volunteers remove 450 pounds of trash after Fourth of July

TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. - It took dozens of volunteers with Treasure Island Adopt-a-Beach all morning to clean up the Treasure Island beach the Sunday morning after the Fourth of July.

Treasure Island beach cleanups

By the numbers:

It took 90 bags to pick up the 450 pounds of trash that volunteers gathered.

"What happens is when you come out and volunteer, you really feel great about what you're doing," Carrie Auerbach, founder and lead volunteer of Treasure Island Adopt-a-Beach, said.

Treasure Island Adopt a Beach brought together 39 volunteers to help pick up everything from food wrappers to left behind supplies. 

"Towels, some fireworks, a lot of plastic, a lot of plastic bags," volunteer Robin DeMay said. "That's what saddens me because that's what the sea turtles eat thinking that's the jellyfish. So that's what we're out here for."

Coastal wildlife preservation

What they're saying:

These volunteers said this work is important.

"With the sun here, it just dries up things really quickly and the plastic starts breaking up into miniscule pieces that you don't see, but it's really important to get those while they're still whole," volunteer Sandra Leone said.

Without the hard work of the volunteers, trash would have gone right into our oceans.

"80% of all the trash on land ends up in the water," Auerbach said. "The turtles are out, you know, it's turtle season. We actually have a dive crew out there snorkeling to see what kind of trash we can find in the water."

Environmental volunteer perspectives

Why you should care:

Volunteers said it is disappointing that people left so much behind, but it is all of our responsibility to keep the planet clean.

"It's like kind of cathartic, you know, you just feel good about being on the beach, your feet in the sand, and picking up trash," Auerbach said. "It's a shame that we have to do so, but you know we're doing a great thing."

This year the group even managed to use a giant rake to help scoop up the fireworks debris, and they said it was a lot more efficient than doing that work by hand.