A Green Gem of a Community Inspires POP, Inc. to Award with Two Jack Johnson Tickets

Plastic Ocean Project, Inc. frequently gives presentations on the research we do, sharing images and videos from the different regions of the world we have sampled.  Thanks to Lisa Rider, we again had the opportunity to present in Onslow County, NC at the cleverly designed Sneads Ferry Library and Environmental Education Center - a beautiful natural space that showcases their community environmentalism.  Lisa shared some stats on their community involvement and here are just a few of what a community can do:

1. Onslow County now ranks sixth in common household recyclables per capita and 11th in total public recycling per capita recovery, up from 32d a year ago and 82nd the year before.

2. Dixon Elementary is ranked the top recycling school in the State. 

3. Queens Creek Elementary started a Styrofoam food tray recycling program this year.

4. Their local Environmental Awareness Event and their Earth and Surf Fest received 3 environmental awards this year including the NC Show Fest Green Award and the NC Green Travel Program’s highest honor of the 3 Dogwood Awards. 

5. They started capturing landfill gas and using it as a renewable energy source which means revenue for the County with absolutely no expense to the County. Furthermore, they are installing solar panels to the old closed landfill to provide even more renewable energy and revenue, again at no cost.

The Robert L. Franck Award ceremony was to honor those striving for a cleaner, greener community, with this year's recipient of the green legend "Robert L. Franck" award going to Jim Wheeler.  Beyond being a retired military, he continues to serve this country in habitat protection by cleaning up manmade materials from the environment. "He picked up his 3,000th bag of trash last month, which he knows well because he does an awesome job tracking data. Tracking trash might seem unusual, but for those of us that use the data to target trends it is very useful information." Shared Lisa Rider, Assistant Director of Keep Onslow Beautiful.  

Beyond the pale, Onslow County Keep America Beautiful enlisted 60 Marines from Camp Lejeune that participated in a marsh area cleanup. The area was a marshy dredge-spoil area along the inter coastal waterway in North Topsail Beach that includes the boat ramp area under the NTB bridge. This area has a lot of shoreline fishing related trash including bottles, cans, baby diapers, fishing line, etc. as well as a lot of materials related to things that washed up from storms and high tides. They picked up 1350 lbs of materials which consisted of over 90% recyclable materials of which they recycled it all.  This inspired POP, Inc. to want to clean up in a similar area in our community. 

Andrea Buddy helps clean up Cape Fear River with dad.

Using funding from the Jack Johnson Foundation, POP, Inc. is calling on our local New Hanover County eco-troops to come out and lend a hand for a cleanup at Carolina Beach State Park.  We will meet at the fishing dock at 3pm Saturday, May 17th.  We will also be raffling off tickets to the Jack Johnson concert held at Koka Booth, Cary NC May 21st.  Come out and help cleanup the environment and you just might cleanup two tickets to the Jack Johnson concert!