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# Get trashy today on the beach
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/get-trashy-today-on-the-beach/
- Published: 2002-09-21T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:44:50.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Environment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Santa Monica cleans up*

*By Daily Press staff*

The largest beach clean-up effort of the year happens this morning in Santa Monica.

Thousands of people along the state’s coastline will spend today picking up cigarette butts, plastic bottles and food wrappers from the beaches and waterways that has collected over the busy summer season.

But the trash that litters the streets also eventually ends up in the ocean by storm water drains.

“We try to reach as far inland as possible on Coastal Cleanup Day in order to stop trash where it starts,” said Eben Schwartz, a spokesperson for the California Coastal Commission. “When you walk along our city streets much of the trash you see lying in the gutter is actually marine debris waiting to happen. All those cigarette butts and plastic wrappers that get casually tossed on the ground may one day wind up in some poor bird or marine mammal’s stomach.”

Each year more than 40,000 volunteers turn out to over 400 cleanup sites statewide to conduct what has been hailed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “largest garbage collection.” It’s officially called California Coastal Cleanup Day. Since it started in 1985, more than 506,000 Californians have removed more than 7.5 million pounds of debris from the shore-lines and coast.

The event, from 9 a.m. to noon, serves as the state’s contribution to the International Coastal Cleanup, organized by the Ocean Conservancy. All 50 states and more than 100 countries take part, making it the largest marine-related volunteer event in the world.

Last year, about 688,000 pounds of debris was collected by 37,000 volunteers statewide. An estimated 297,000 cigarette butts were collected statewide last year. LA County’s contribution was 50,000 pounds of trash with about 7,000 volunteers.

In Santa Monica, a team of scuba divers and kayakers will go to the bottom of the ocean and pick up water debris they find.

“A lot of people throw stuff off the pier,” said Haley Jones, an organizer with Heal the Bay, a non-profit organization dedicated to cleaning up Santa Monica Bay.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 21, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/092102.pdf?ref=smdp.com)