New Jersey
Amazon packages, light-emitting condoms, false eyeballs: beach guards present a list of bizarre finds
Lots of plastic – but also lots of strange finds: garbage from the beach in Sandy Hook in the US state of New Jersey (archive image)
© Wayne Parry / Picture Alliance
The environmental organization Clean Ocean Action has released its annual report on its garbage collection on New Jersey beaches. Some finds make you scratch your head.
“How the hell did that get here?!” The helpers at Clean Ocean Action (COA) are likely to ask themselves this question quite often. The U.S. Environmental Protection Organization holds trash collections on New Jersey beaches every spring and fall and now has the result of the actions of 2021 published.
According to the report, a record amount of rubbish accumulated last year. More than 10,000 volunteers collected a total of 513,605 items along the 204 kilometers of coast – more than at any time since the events began in 1985. “It is disappointing that the number has increased. We still hope that the numbers will go down will be,” said COA Director Cindy Zipf the Associated Press (AP) news agency. “And the weird things just keep getting weirder.”
More than 82 percent of the finds made of plastic
A look at the list of finds reveals what Zipf means by this. While the environmental activists found items such as plastic lids and caps, PET bottles, and food and candy wrappers in the sands of the “Garden State,” their haul also included plenty of bizarre trash. Under the heading “The Strangest of the Strange” the report includes: dental splints, a full set of dentures, a bundle of hair, a yearbook, parts of a globe, Amazon packages, a shower head, a weathervane, a basket lamp, a water tester, an easel and the running board of a pickup truck.
And there are many more finds that would be considered strange without exaggeration: potency pills, a glow-in-the-dark condom, a thong, a used drug overdose treatment kit, several empty sachets of marijuana, a bullet casing and a wrong eyeball.
Also a lottery ticket, a glue stick, a mini fridge, a toilet brush, a TV remote control, a plastic monkey, rosary beads, parts of a dishwasher, a CD rack with Limp Bizkit CDs, a plastic accordion, a mousetrap, a check for a dollar, a wig and a US flag including a pole.
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According to the COA, more than 82 percent of the finds were objects or parts made of plastic or foam. The number of bottle and cup lids reached a new high at 69,454, as did the number of food and candy packages (58,589).
There was significantly more litter in the fall than in the spring in 67 out of 95 categories, including dog waste bags, plastic bottles, smoker’s waste, plastic food-transporting materials, and ice cream spoons or sticks, according to the report. In spring, on the other hand, more respiratory masks were found than in autumn, with a total of more than 3,600.
New Jersey bans single-use plastic bags
Clean Ocean Action is using the data it collects to advocate for laws like the single-use plastic bag ban, which many cities have already enacted and is scheduled to go into effect May 4 across New Jersey. Zipf called it one of the toughest laws of its kind in the United States.
One object that every beach visitor would probably like to discover was among the finds of the environmentalists: a message in a bottle. “We don’t know what it said,” Zipf told the AP. “But I hope it was, ‘Please keep it clean!'”
Swell: Clean Ocean Action, Associated Press, Asbury Park Press