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Artists Gini Billes, front left, Airyn Simpson, front right, Jules Baker, rear left, and Fred Gonzales, are among 30 artists from Huntington Beach who are each decorating a dumpster that will sit in the downtown area in Huntington Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)Kim Kramer, left, and Barbara Haynes, co-founders of the Huntington Beach Public Art Alliance, with four painted dumpsters that will sit in the downtown area in Huntington Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)A dumpster titled, "Tiki,"painted by artist Fred Gonzales in Huntington Beach, California, on Wednesday, August 23, 2017. The bin is among 30 that will be placed around downtown. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)A dumpster titled, "Pier Pressure," painted by artist Gini Billes in Huntington Beach, California, on Wednesday, August 23, 2017. The bin is among 30 that will be placed around downtown. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)A dumpster titled, "Garbage Ghouls," painted by artist Airyn Simpson in Huntington Beach, California, on Wednesday, August 23, 2017. Th... (OCRegister)
One of the “mega” sites will be at Magnolia Street at Huntington State Beach, where there will be a “Trash Free Jamboree” party following the clean-up, with 600 to 800 people expected to attend. There will be educational booths, raffles, environmental art and food trucks. A similar party will be held at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point.Wetlands, which often are catch areas for trash making its way downstream, will get a much-needed cleaning as well.Smith said California accounts for 10 percent to 15 percent of the worldwide tally of trash picked up during the one-day event. This year has been especially filthy along the coast after strong winter storms.But during the summer months, especially toward the end, he said, “it’s more about cleaning up the trash left by beachgoers.” According to the California Coastal Commission, residents and tourists make more than 150 million visits to California beaches each year.The effort to keep shorelines clear of marine debris comes at a cost: 90 West Coast communities spend a total of more than $520 million each year to combat litter, according to a 2012 study.And it’s not just economic impacts. One of the biggest problems with litter is the impact on the environment. Birds, fish and mammals can mistake plastic for food, and an estimated 245 species have been found to have ingested marine debris, according to the Coastal Commission.“Debris may cause choking and injuries, and with plastic filling their stomachs, animals may have a false feeling of being full and may die of starvation. Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, one of their favorite foods,” according to the commission’s website.Schwartz, the commission’s marine debris program manager, said he’s interested to see what volunteers find this year with all the water that flushed debris down creeks and riverbeds.“I have a feeling we’re going to encounter a lot more trash than we typically would,” he said.Volunteers document the debris they find as a way to educate.“This is our one chance each year to not only clean our beaches, but take a snapshot of what is littering our state,” Schwartz said. “We need everyone’s help — our real one opportunity to make significant changes, not only in the state of our beaches, but policies and educational effort. We have to stop trash from reaching our beaches in the first place.”Despite efforts to curb cigarette butts, they still make up 37 percent to 40 percent of the trash collected. “It’s a very significant problem,” Schwartz said. “They are incredibly toxic to our environment. It’s made of plastic, the same as our sunglasses are made of, it never biodegrades and it leaches toxins into the environment that can kill fish or make our children who ingest them sick.”Recent plastic bag laws, however, have had a big impact. “That’s been a real success story in the state,” he said. In 2008, volunteers picked up 52,544 plastic bags. In 2015, with about the same number of volunteers, there were 23,441 collected, he said.“That’s because so many cities had put bans in place,” he said. “I’ll be very curious to see what the numbers look like moving forward. That’s one of the things about collecting data — it helps us figure out if policies and regulations are working, and here we see that they are.”Environmental advocates are pushing for laws against other trash that is commonly found, including straws and Styrofoam products.“The data helps guide us toward what the next goal needs to be,” Schwartz said. “It helps us establish new education... (Long Beach Press Telegram)
One of the “mega” sites will be at Magnolia Street at Huntington State Beach, where there will be a “Trash Free Jamboree” party following the clean-up, with 600 to 800 people expected to attend. There will be educational booths, raffles, environmental art and food trucks. A similar party will be held at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point.Wetlands, which often are catch areas for trash making its way downstream, will get a much-needed cleaning as well.Smith said California accounts for 10 percent to 15 percent of the worldwide tally of trash picked up during the one-day event. This year has been especially filthy along the coast after strong winter storms.But during the summer months, especially toward the end, he said, “it’s more about cleaning up the trash left by beachgoers.” According to the California Coastal Commission, residents and tourists make more than 150 million visits to California beaches each year.The effort to keep shorelines clear of marine debris comes at a cost: 90 West Coast communities spend a total of more than $520 million each year to combat litter, according to a 2012 study.And it’s not just economic impacts. One of the biggest problems with litter is the impact on the environment. Birds, fish and mammals can mistake plastic for food, and an estimated 245 species have been found to have ingested marine debris, according to the Coastal Commission.“Debris may cause choking and injuries, and with plastic filling their stomachs, animals may have a false feeling of being full and may die of starvation. Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, one of their favorite foods,” according to the commission’s website.Schwartz, the commission’s marine debris program manager, said he’s interested to see what volunteers find this year with all the water that flushed debris down creeks and riverbeds.“I have a feeling we’re going to encounter a lot more trash than we typically would,” he said.Volunteers document the debris they find as a way to educate.“This is our one chance each year to not only clean our beaches, but take a snapshot of what is littering our state,” Schwartz said. “We need everyone’s help — our real one opportunity to make significant changes, not only in the state of our beaches, but policies and educational effort. We have to stop trash from reaching our beaches in the first place.”Despite efforts to curb cigarette butts, they still make up 37 percent to 40 percent of the trash collected. “It’s a very significant problem,” Schwartz said. “They are incredibly toxic to our environment. It’s made of plastic, the same as our sunglasses are made of, it never biodegrades and it leaches toxins into the environment that can kill fish or make our children who ingest them sick.”Recent plastic bag laws, however, have had a big impact. “That’s been a real success story in the state,” he said. In 2008, volunteers picked up 52,544 plastic bags. In 2015, with about the same number of volunteers, there were 23,441 collected, he said.“That’s because so many cities had put bans in place,” he said. “I’ll be very curious to see what the numbers look like moving forward. That’s one of the things about collecting data — it helps us figure out if policies and regulations are working, and here we see that they are.”Environmental advocates are pushing for laws against other trash that is commonly found, including straws and Styrofoam products.“The data helps guide us toward what the next goal needs to be,” Schwartz said. “It helps us establish new education... (and rest of state's beaches, too - this weekend - Long Beach Press Telegram)
SOCRRA towns – which are Berkley, Beverly Hills, Birmingham, Clawson, Ferndale, Hazel Park, Huntington Woods, Lathrup Village, Oak Park, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak and Troy.To block SOCRRA's move back into its backyard, Madison Heights officials burst into the site -- armed with a search warrant -- and then inspected the area, declared it unsafe and threw up barricades. Last week, SOCRRA sued to get back in. Next week, if SOCRRA loses in court, its arch foe will have delayed and possibly blocked indefinitely the authority's $12-million plan to make recycling easier for 700,000 people in Oakland County, General Manager Jeff McKeen said."Our goal is just to do a great job of handling solid waste for our members," McKeen said. The authority’s plan to expand was blessed months ago by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, he said, adding: "We think we’re regulated by the state -- not by Madison Heights."Yet, if SOCRRA prevails in court, Madison Heights will have to tolerate six days a week of truck traffic all summer, bringing yard waste and construction debris to a spot bordered by homes, a school, a baseball field and a golf course, Mayor Brian Hartwell said. SOCRRA might not care about that, but it can't deny the city's ability to close off a dangerous site, Hartwell said."When our fire chief and building inspector went through there, they found over 50 clear violations of our building and fire codes. And we're not talking nickel-and-dime things like a cracked window or graffiti. Those are there. But we're talking about doors welded shut, large sections of masonry falling apart," Hartwell said.The city even wonders whether SOCRRA's giant smokestacks towering over an adjoining baseball field might collapse. So, after the inspections, the city closed the ball field closest to the stacks, officials said.NUSOCRRA's overall plan, one that state environmental honchos praise, is to upgrade the authority's main recycling facility in Troy so that it's a state-of-the-art,"single-stream" process, then spend nearly $5 million to buy 110,000 jumbo recycling carts for residents of its member cities. The hope is that people will double the amount they recycle because, with no need to sort paper from plastic, they'll just toss everything into the big new carts -- exceeding Gov. Rick Snyder's goal to push Michigan's recycling participation rate from its dismal 15% in 2014 to 30% this year, McKeen said.ENDNUDuring a four-to-six-month construction phase in Troy, SOCRRA hoped to temporarily reopen its facility in Madison Heights to handle part of its trash and recycling flow, he said.But whether SOCRRA's fresh trash incursion lasts weeks, months, or all year, Madison Heights officials are adamant about not allowing any fresh activity at the old site -- the subject of countless lawsuits, quarrels and pollution complaints between them and SOCRRA, formerly called the Southeastern Oakland County Resource Recovery Authority.SOCCRA's latest lawsuit against the city is "like 160 pages," said Madison Heights' environmental attorney Hugh Thomas. For 31 years, Thomas has made a career out of fighting t... (Detroit Free Press)
