Volunteer beach cleanup slated for Friday

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Most trash on the beaches of South Padre Island came from oceangoing vessels dumping their garbage overboard.
That’s changed: Now it’s beachgoers who are responsible for most of the beach trash.
An international treaty enacted in the late 1980s to curb dumping at sea has made a dent, to some degree, in the trash that washes ashore from the Gulf. Individual litterbugs are a different kind of scourge. Until they can be persuaded to change their trashy ways, others will pick up after them.
Coming this Friday is the Texas General Land Office’s Adopt-a-Beach program at South Padre Island, aimed at the volunteer efforts of Winter Texans, at Edwin Atwood Park, off Highway 100 at Beach Access No. 5 on the Island.
Registration is from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.; the cleanup runs until 11:30 a.m.
The morning will end with a “What Did You Find?” session and refreshments.
The event is co-sponsored by the Cameron County Parks Department.
GLO spokesman Jim Suydam said the Adopt-a-Beach cleanups “put the elbow grease into environmentalism.”
“These are folks that would rather pick up a soda can than walk on by,” Suydam said. “They’re the ones who come out for this.”
The GLO organizes the cleanups, alerting the media, coordinating volunteers and supplying gloves and trash bags. The cleanups are funded mainly through private contributions.
Since the Adopt-a-Beach program began in 1986, volunteers have collected enough trash on Texas beaches to fill a line of dump trucks 90 miles long, according to the GLO.
In the history of the SPI cleanup, 1,713 volunteers have removed 86,345 pounds — 43 tons — of trash.
Normal participation for the SPI event is about 100 volunteers, Suydam said. Even last year, despite very cold temperatures, 36 volunteers removed 1,650 pounds of trash from three miles of beach, he said.
“It’s not uncommon to find sea turtles with a belly full of plastic,” Suydam said. “A turtle can’t feed itself at that point.”
The Winter Texans who participate on Friday are “the kind of people that can’t stand to walk past a bunch of trash on the beach,” Suydam said. “We’re happy to organize their efforts. The volunteers really are the key to this whole program’s success.
For more information or to support Adopt-a-Beach call the GLO at 877-892-6278 or visit .