Atlantic City Beach Sweep

One of the service projects that I did during the second half of my semester was Atlantic City Beach Sweep. It was organized by the club called Water Watch. Me and my friend, who is also a honors student, Haleigh Sockwell wanted to do one service project together. While I wanted to do a road cleanup, she proposed to do the beach sweep, and eventually we set our minds on the beach sweep. The beach sweep was organized on Saturday, October 19th. Everyone volunteering for the beach sweep gathered at the Arts and Science building at 8:15 am. We were signed in by club president, handed out our gloves, and then we carpooled to Atlantic City.

All the volunteers, people from other volunteer organizations were also present, had to gather in front of the Rainforest Cafe on Atlantic City boardwalk. I was not expecting this to be a big event, but surprisingly it was. Before the beach sweep the mayor of Atlantic City along with an associate from The Atlantic City Electric were present to encourage the volunteers on the chilly Saturday morning (The Atlantic City Electric was one of the main sponsors). At the end of the clean up as a compliment to the volunteers, the members of The Barenaked Ladies were going to perform. After reaching there we also found out that we were going to help the organizers in carrying out  a survey of the trash we find on the beach during the clean up to keep a record of the trash found. Everything was nice and organized. Teams were formed, me and Haleigh were partners, and each team was given a record sheet, pencil, a regular trash bag and a bag to throw trash that could be recycled.

During the clean up the data that we collected was horrifying. First of all me and Haleigh found about 246 cigarette butts from a small section of beach itself. Also the number of beer bottles and soda cans collected were not any less terrifying. I personally felt bad about how people were using a public beach. Also, some highly inappropriate and  embarrassing things were found. Another group also found a dead seagull, which the organizers took care off. It was so much fun doing the clean up with Haleigh that we wandered off too far on the beach and a Stockton student had to call me to inform us that it was time to leave. Overall, it was a well organized event and a nice day spent with Haleigh.