Volunteers remove nearly 700 pounds of trash from South Bay Marina

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) - Volunteers removed 677 pounds of trash from the South Bay Marina in a matter of hours Saturday.

“You know, plastic bottles, broken glass, those kinds of things. It’s just kind of whatever washes up right on the bay,” Green Bay Sail & Paddle Board President Tim Hess explained.

Green Bay Sail & Paddle led the volunteers in collaboration with the Alliance for the Great Lakes on Earth Day. This year the Alliance celebrated 20 years of Adopt-a-Beach data. At each cleanup, volunteers record how much and what kind of garbage they collect for scientists to analyze.

“There are a lot of people that have been doing a lot of cleanups, beach cleanups, park cleanups on Earth Day. There are a lot of people passionate about it. We have people that have come from an hour away or so…” Hess said.

The Rochester Institute of Technology reported more than 22 million pounds of plastic enter the Great Lakes each year. There’s so much of it, the Alliance said 85% of the litter volunteers pick up is plastic.

Hess said, “Well, plastic doesn’t really break down. Nor does Styrofoam or some of the things like that that we found today. It’s important to get it out of the water and broken glass is something that someone could step on as well as sharp metal objects and things like that that we’re encountering.”

Action 2 News saw volunteers turn in rusted metal pipes and large wooden planks.

Young Marlo Bodart took initiative by recording each piece of garbage on her clipboard.

“We have a lot of plastic pieces, some plastic bottles, food wrappers and foam and glass pieces,” Bodart said. “We should just clean it up because you don’t want to see garbage everywhere.”

Volunteers found some more unique items too, like a giant piece of foam.

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I mean, being at the mouth of the Fox River it’s kind of more of an industrial neighborhood so you’ll get more bigger pieces of wood and foam and things like that,” Hess said.

Volunteer Sarah Platten said, “We’ve found a lot of stuff from boats. A buoy off the side of a boat,. We found a lot of shotgun shells, probably from scaring off the birds.”

Anyone can make a difference, no matter how small.

“You can always start picking up around your house, around your neighborhood, just local parks. You can always do stuff like that,” Platten expressed.

Hess added, “Be mindful of where your trash ends up regardless of what it is. It doesn’t take much for it to really pile up in inopportune places.”

You can find beach cleanups in your area on the Alliance for the Great Lakes website.