Volunteers Can Help Sweep Beaches at 11 County Sites

AVALON — On Oct. 23 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., community members will be cleaning up the beaches and collecting data for Clean Ocean Action’s 25th Annual Beach Sweeps.
There are 70 locations throughout New Jersey and 11 beaches in Cape May County, including:
Avalon – 30th Street
Cape May – Nature Center at 1600 Delaware Avenue and 2nd Avenue
Del Haven – Sunray Beach at Roosevelt Boulevard
North Wildwood – 15th Avenue
Ocean City – 9th Street Music Pier and 57th Street
Sea Isle City – JFK Boulevard
Strathmere – Webster Avenue
Stone Harbor – 95th Street
Wildwood – Poplar Avenue
October 23rd, 2010 is the end cap of the 25th Anniversary for Clean Ocean Action’s bi-annual Beach Sweeps.  The Beach Sweep effort has brought together the efforts of over 75,000 citizens to pick up over 4 million pieces of trash from the beaches and waterways of New Jersey.  Through these sweeping efforts, the community has helped preserve our shores and learned about the harmful affects of litter in the marine environment.
 
Clean Ocean Action’s Beach Sweeps are part of the 25th Annual International Coastal Cleanup, the world’s largest volunteer effort to help protect our ocean, lakes, and rivers.  COA submits the volunteer-collected data to Ocean Conservancy to be included in their global marine debris report as well as produces their own Annual Beach Sweep Report.  These publications highlight the pollution problems and offer quantitative data that helps drive local and international efforts to combat marine pollution.  As a tribute to the 25 years of successful Sweeping, COA has also published the “Journal of Citizen Action Against Beach Litter.”  This Journal highlights data and trends in ocean pollution as well as educates the public on ways to reduce ocean pollution. 
 
Media and citizens are encouraged to share their beach sweeps experience online via Facebook and Twitter.  COA has established #2010sweeps as the twitter hashtag to follow.  Beach captains and participants will be uploading real-time experiences to facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clean-Ocean-Action/126163971494
 
Businesses throughout the community sponsor the Beach Sweeps.  The Statewide Sponsors for the 2010 Beach Sweeps are Aveda, Bank of America, Comcast, Kohl’s and Verizon.  The South jersey sponsor is Atlantic City Electric.  Additional sponsorships include:  Bayshore Recycling, Brook 35 & West, Monmouth County Association of Realtors, New Jersey American Water, New Jersey Natural Gas, Patagonia, United Teletech Financial, and Wakefern ShopRite.  Individual site sponsors include Surfrider Foundation (Jersey Shore Chapter) for Deal: NuStar Energy for Keansburg; Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Ricoh Americas Corporation for Sandy Hook; Adventure Aquarium for Ventnor; and Lower Cape May Regional Education Association for Cape May, Jenkinson’s Aquarium for Point Pleasant Beach.  In-kind support provided by Becton, Dickinson and Company, Clif Bar, IHOP Neptune & Keyport, and Wakefern ShopRite.