Atlantic City Beach Sweep

One of the service projects I did during the first half of the semester was an annual Atlantic City Beach Sweep for a club called Water Watch. I found out about this service project from walking through lower D Wing. There was a little sign that was made by hand and a table that was advertising the event. I love doing beach cleanups, so I went to my next class and asked fellow honor student Dhvani Shah to go with me. She had wanted to do a road cleanup that weekend, but I thought we could get more done at a beach sweep. So on Saturday October 19th everyone going for the sweep met at the Arts and Sciences Building at 8:15 in the morning. We all signed in, got our gloves, and found who out who was carpooling with who and we were off to Atlantic City.

The volunteer group arrived in Atlantic City near the Rainforest Café where other organizations were there to help with the beach sweep. The mayor of Atlantic City was there to talk to us along with a representative from Atlantic City Electric since they were one of the sponsors for the annual event. We were instructed on how the people in charge wanted us to clean up the beach because we weren’t just supposed to pick up trash. We were to record every piece of trash on a piece of paper and separate recyclables from trash. We also found out that towards the end of our service, a band called The Barenaked Ladies would be there to perform for us and help pick up some trash. The Barenaked Ladies is the band that sings “The Big Bang Theory” theme song, so I was pretty excited to see and hear them play.

The volunteers were then dismissed to go pick up trash where they pleased. Dhvani and I started for the beach and immediately found trash. We recorded and counted each piece we picked up while walking up and down the beach. Later in the day we were finally called to come back to the boardwalk where we found out that everyone else was already done and that The Barenaked Ladies had already played and left, which was disappointing. We got a little too into cleaning up the trash and missed some exciting things, but we had no regrets about the cleanup.

There were a few reasons why I enjoyed the beach sweep. Everyone had a partner for cleaning up, and mine was a good friend, so I didn’t feel alone or left out while cleaning. I also enjoy doing labor while volunteering; moving around is a lot better than just sitting down at a table to talk to people. Also there was actual volunteer work that was possible to do. I heard that at the animal shelter there were too many volunteers and not enough jobs. At a beach cleanup there is no set job, and of course there is plenty of beach to walk and clean. Another reason I liked the beach sweep is how the people in charge were organizing it. We all had a paper with items we could just mark down to keep track of what trash we picked up. I was impressed with how well the organizations were prepared to clean up the beach. My only problem with the project was the lack of communication. There was a lack in communication in getting information about this event out, there was lack of communication for when we should be done volunteering, and there was almost no interaction between the volunteers almost the whole time.

I was able to learn through this beach cleanup as well. A person can learn a lot about the population from what trash they discard on the beach. Cigarette butts were one of the most picked up items on the beach. Dhvani and I had gathered a total of 246 cigarette butts. We learned that this number fluctuates every year, and researchers learn about smoking and whether or not it has gone up. This is the same for any item. Any item can tell that more people are drinking more water from the bottle caps they leave behind, or that styrofoam cups are becoming a problem from the amount of styrofoam pieces that are being gathered. We were able to learn about how the importance of what people leave behind can say about the population and how people are changing or consuming more products. Overall, it was a pretty good community service event.