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Coastal Cleanup Day is Saturday

Gregory Crofton, Tahoe Daily Tribune

During last year’s Coastal Cleanup Day nearly 4,000 pounds of garbage and 300 pounds of recyclables were collected in a 26-mile stretch from South Shore to West Shore.

Volunteers and staff from public agencies will be back at it again on Saturday scouring rivers, streams and Lake Tahoe for unnatural things.

Cigarette butts are what gets picked up the most, but corn cobs, boat propellers and construction cones can also turn up. Each year an award is given by the Coastal Commission to the person who finds the most unusual item.



Anyone interested in helping out should show up at El Dorado Beach at 8:45 a.m. Starbucks will provide coffee for volunteers. Participants need to sign a waiver before they get farmed out to one of 17 sites targeted for cleanup. Groups of four to five people work under a “beach captain” who will coordinate sectional cleanup.

Coastal Cleanup Day was first organized in 1984. Since then it has moved inland after it was realized that garbage on land or in streams can end up in a lake or the ocean, said Joann Eisenbrandt, of the Clean Tahoe Program.



Coastal Cleanup Day has spread to all 50 states and 100 countries. Not all of the countries conduct cleanup on the same day, but the collection happens within the week throughout the world.

Last year, worldwide, more than 390,000 volunteers collected 8 million pounds of trash. That number included 1.6 million cigarette butts and 22,750 diapers. For more information or to volunteer for Coastal Cleanup Day at South Shore, call Clean Tahoe at (530) 544-4210.

— Gregory Crofton can be reached at (530) 542-8045 or by e-mail at gcrofton@tahoedailytribune.com


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