Let’s Talk Trash: The Ocean Edition

When you visit your favorite beach, what do you see?

Maybe you see gorgeous shells decorating the sand and foot prints. Conversely, maybe you see discarded beverage cans, cigarette butts, and broken parts of styrofoam coolers. Ocean and beach trash are a serious global problem, but change starts at home and we can easily document a transition to a marine debris-free North Carolina.

Marine Debris in North Carolina

In 2017-2018, the North Carolina Coastal Federation partnered with non-profits, academia, state and local government organizations to assess the status of coastal pollution in the state of North Carolina and create a plan for removal. As a result, The State of Marine Debris in North Carolina: An Assessment of Prevention and Removal Efforts (https://www.nccoast.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NC-Marine-Debris-Assessment.pdf) was created. In the state of the past 30 years of North Carolina beach cleanups, 400,000 volunteers collected 12 million pounds of trash, mostly consumer debris and over half of the items were plastic. The top ten most common found pieces of trash are represented in the following graphic:

How you can help

There are many ways to become a positive change agent in the NC State community; you can plog around campus, join a sustainable student organization, participate in student-led cleanups, etc. However, as members of the Forestry and Environmental Resources Department, you may already be making mindful choices by reducing consumer plastic use and picking up litter on a regular basis. You might also be participating in one of the many social media challenges encouraging cleanup initiatives including the new #TrashTag, FER’s Dr. Steph Jefferies’s #EverydayTrashPickup, and the statewide tag #DebrisFreeNC. It seems like you could be doing everything you can to reduce the amount of trash entering the Atlantic Ocean.

 So, what’s the next step? Is there one?

While you may not be a marine science major or an expert on ocean plastic pollution, you can still contribute to ongoing research and changes in policy by collecting data through citizen science initiatives. You even have two choices of apps to download, the NOAA Marine Debris Tracker App (https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/partnerships/marine-debris-tracker) and Ocean Conservancy’s Clean Swell App (https://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/international-coastal-cleanup/cleanswell/). Both will track your geographical location and provide a way to track frequent pollution near inland and coastal waterways. You can even level up in the Clean Swell App gaining different badges depending on how much you collect.

With a data collection device literally at your fingertips, debris documentation is easier than ever. So, during your next hike in the woods or trip to the beach, pull out your cell phone, open the app of your choice, and pick up some trash.

Written by: Leslie Smith