A total of 31 team captains and 583 volunteers representing 27 countries participated in the Playa Patrol Spring Clean, which was the beach event in Almuñécar on Saturday the 23rd.
People from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, Kenya, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, UK, Ukraine, USA, Venezuela, Wales and Zimbabwe, including families and children and CD Almuñécar City Football Club pitched in on Playa San Cristóbal and Playa Velilla, as well as Playa La Herradura.
There was even a beach clean up by volunteers at Playa Cabopino (Marbella) to show their support. Special thanks to all the volunteers for their dedication and hard work to help keep our sea plastic free.
“Expanding the beach clean ups to multiple beaches and multiple towns on the same date is a major undertaking and would be impossible without the hard work of Ocean Ambassadors, Christopher Jenkins, Dita Grunte, Rafa Coehlo, Ann-Marie Bönström and Rolf Hedberg,” said Ann Jenkins, Director of Asociación Playa Patrol, adding, “There were stories from so many parents about the impact that the beach clean up has on their children.”
According to Lilia DeCos, originally from the Ukraine, who lives in La Herradura at the moment and is travelling the world with her husband and two daughters, “My daughters Lia and Ksenia are two and four-years old and after attending the first community beach clean up last year, they were so excited to help out again.”
Lilia went on to say that the girls continue to draw pictures and talk with their friends about the dangers of plastic straws and bottle caps to fish and other creatures that live in the sea.
“Now when they see litter on the street or the beach, they stop to pick it up. For me, I had no idea the dangers posed by cigarette butts to marine life and learned a lot just by participating in a beach clean up,” she concluded
“Obviously everyone that came out today is passionate about helping to keep our sea plastic free and with so many international people participating, it felt as though a global inter-cambio was underway,” said Ann-Marie Bönström, Ocean Ambassador for Playa Velilla, originally from Sweden.
From the plastic pollution collected by the 30 teams, it is obvious that cigarette butts and micro-plastics are a big threat to the sea. Teams collected 40,000 cigarette butts and 430kg of litter in just under 90 minutes and came across a wide variety of plastic pollution and other litter including rope, fishing line, broken umbrellas and beach chairs, fishing nets, tetra paks, batteries and drinking straws.
The volunteers delivered the collected garbage to the various End Zones for group photos and then helped carry it to the trucks courtesy of Town Hall, Department of Environment.
Each beach was treated to drinks and tapas at one of three local chiringuitos: Chiringuito Bambú (La Herradura), Restaurante El Calabré (Playa San Cristóbal) and Chiringuito La Primera Ola (Playa Velilla). Thank you to L’Atelier for providing the volunteers at Playa Velilla with an extra treat: homemade ice cream.
A special thank you to Asociación Chiringuitos Costa Tropical for their financial support, to Costa Tropical Tourism and Carbonell for assistance with the project.
(News: Almunecar/Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)