OLD ORCHARD BEACH, Maine — Beach clean-ups took place all across the country Friday, including in Maine, as volunteers from the nationwide nonprofit Surfrider Foundation worked to clear trash left behind from Fourth of July celebrations.
Volunteers with the organization held a beach clean-up at Old Orchard Beach from 1-4 p.m.
Paula Slayton, the vice chair for Surfrider Foundation's Maine chapter, said July 5 is marked as the dirtiest day of the year for beaches.
Old Orchard Beach Surf Rescue's assistant captain Lance Timberlake said more than 100,000 people crowd the beach during the Fourth of July weekend.
"There was traffic off every road. It was backed up for a long time," Timberlake said.
First comes traffic, then comes trash, Timberlake explained. Beaches are often crowded with litter after Independence Day. Holiday crowds don't slow down, leaving little time to clear the area.
Workers with Old Orchard Beach Public Works get out early in the morning on July 5 and every day to clear trash from the beach.
"It's definitely not as dirty as I would have expected it to be after seeing all the people," Samantha Belaire, who works at her family's business Big Waves, said.
Although the beach looked to be in decent shape earlier in the day, a few bottles and small reminders of the Fourth's shebang still lingered in the sand.
Slayton said she knows the trash that remains is just a small amount of what's really out there. Straws, straw wrappers, to-go containers, and cigarette buds are just a few of the things Slayton said she was expecting to find scattered on the beach. The amount of trash volunteers collected from beaches across the country last year blows her away, she said.
"We cleaned over 100,000 pounds of trash nationwide on that one day," Slayton said. "For the whole year, we cleaned about 250,000 pounds of trash. So, [the] dirtiest beach day of the year, July 5, was almost half of the trash collected by Surfrider last year."
Plastic doesn't really break down, and tides can often carry pollutants out to sea. Slayton said beach clean-ups are nice, but we can't clean our way out of the problem.
She said the fix to the issue can be so simple: take what you bring in out with you. Timberlake said he agrees.
"We want to make sure that the beach is welcoming, it's comfortable and it's clean because if we don't maintain that, people will stop coming here," Timberlake said. "And this is the lifeblood of our community."
Clean-up crews say restaurant owners can help by not offering plastic items like to-go cups and utensils if customers don't request them.
If you want to learn more about how to volunteer with the Surfrider Foundation, click here.