Over three clean-ups this month, Plastic Free Cayman volunteers have collected more than 1,000 pounds of litter and marine debris from the Safe Haven area, prompting the group to urge government to employ people to clean up local beaches and mangrove areas.
Plastic Free Cayman partnered with Compass Media and its radio stations, including Z99 and Rooster FM, to host a microplastic and mangrove-centred beach clean-up at Safe Haven on Saturday morning. Over 50 local volunteers attended the clean-up and removed more than 630 pounds of waste in a single morning.
This was the third major clean-up event at Safe Haven this month.
A statement from Plastic Free Cayman said, “In total, more than 1,000 pounds of waste has been removed from the location in less than three weeks. This calls into question the need for a government-based clean up initiative, that could employ workers to maintain the health and safety of our local beaches.”
Microplastics continue to be a concern among the volunteers.
“Even with much of the focus centred on cleaning the mangrove areas, there still remains many microplastics throughout this ecosystem,” the statement from the group noted. “In fact, crabs, worms and small fish are ingesting these plastics and even making them part of their habitats.”
Local litter
The group also found that, as well as marine debris washing ashore from countries like Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, much of the collected debris includes local litter, and said there appeared to be very little enforcement of Cayman’s anti-litter laws.
“In fact, two of the most common trash items found in the area just across from the Golf Club were beer bottles and condoms. Sadly, hundreds of these items were collected by our volunteers. Trash they had no hand in creating,” the group stated.
This weekend’s beach clean was Plastic Free Cayman’s 80th clean-up event. Since it started its clean-ups five years ago, the group has removed more than 76,000 pounds of trash from beaches on all three of Cayman’s islands.
It noted that, since January this year, its volunteers have taken more than 5,000 pounds of trash off beaches.
Patnership
Plastic Free Cayman said it was excited to continue its partnership with Compass Media, and plans to carry out quarterly clean-up events together to boost community awareness and outreach on the issue of pollution.
“Compass Media was thrilled to be able to host this past weekend’s beach clean with Plastic Free Cayman,” a spokesperson for the company said. “Our ongoing partnership is one we are very passionate about and consider an important initiative to protect and preserve Cayman’s natural habitats. The biggest hope is that by partnering with them, we can utilise our platforms to further spread awareness of the great work this organisation does and advocate for environmentally sustainable initiatives that will reduce the amount of litter found across our islands.“
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I was a part of this cleanup and it was shocking. Cayman needs to do better and take steps to eliminate single use plastics, enforce anti-litter laws and promote more public cleanups before its too late.