On Sunday, December 9^th, our SNHS chapter held a beach clean-up at the Boynton Inlet. Club members and non-club members alike gathered and took pounds of trash off the shore. Items found included plenty of straws, bottle caps, and Styrofoam, among other objects.

SNHS hosts events such as these not only to help clean the environment, but to teach the importance of proper waste management. Having plastics in our ocean is very detrimental to the organisms found there. For example, animals such as sea turtles and birds often mistake trash for food. When they eat these items, they can often choke, or even eat so much of it that they can’t eat anything else. These animals will end up dying of starvation.

Plastics in the ocean are even more of an issue when they begin to erode and break down into microscopic pieces. These micro-plastics are very toxic to not only marine organisms but to other life as well. These toxins, once consumed, make their way up the food web into bigger species, such as whales, sharks, and humans.

The goal of this beach clean up and others like it is to reduce the amount of plastic and garbage that ends up on our coastlines, and to prevent them from reaching other species. Other ways to prevent trash from entering our waters includes throwing away garbage into proper waste containers, switching from plastic bottles to reusable ones, eliminating the use of plastic straws and garbage bags, and reducing our carbon footprint overall.

If we work together, we can clean up our oceans and make not only the marine community, but also the globe, a safer and healthier environment.