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.
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| 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!
