Live Green: Ocean City Surfrider Chapter

OCEAN CITY, Md. – The Ocean City Surfrider Chapter works to clean up litter from the beaches in Ocean City, Md.

The Surfrider Foundation is a nationwide nonprofit organization that started in 1984 by a group of surfers. They were concerned about the health risks due to environmental threats on the beaches of Malibu, California. The organization today has 200 chapters in every state, and the Ocean City Chapter is one of them.

Mandi Wells, the volunteer coordinator for the Ocean City Chapter, works with the students at Stephen Decatur High School, and they started a Surfrider club eight years ago. They not only have beach cleanups every month, but they do advocacy work as well. Wells says, “We went to Annapolis to talk with our legislatures, our local legislatures to help prevent plastic pollution in our area. So that was a really good experience for some of our kids that were able to go.”

She tells me they find a variety of trash, especially in the summer. “The item that we find the most numbers is cigarette butts, and second is plastic food wrappers, and then we find plastic bottles and bottle caps.”

The chapter has been working on a few projects, one of which was making use of cigarette butts, “We did do one time a beach cleanup that coincided with the Great American Smokeout. We concentrated on collecting cigarette butts and we actually got an entire five gallon bucket of cigarette butts that we then packaged up and sent off to TerraCycle. So, that they could recycle all those cigarette butts and turn them into things like plastic benches that they actually have here in Ocean City,” Wells Says. I had joined in on the clean-up, and found more cigarette butts than I had anticipated.

Usually, when the chapter does their cleanups, they try to recycle as much as they can. Another project that they have been working on is giving clean-up kits to hotels for vacationers.

Wells explains, “One of our projects this year for our Stephen Decatur High School, Surfrider Club is solo beach cleanup kits, and we made bags that include our data sheet where they could write down things that they’ve picked up when they went out on their cleanup. Gloves, a trash bag, hand wipes, a pencil and a direction sheet, and we’re hoping that we can put these in hotels with a flier that they can read about it and they go out.” She adds, “When people come to visit Ocean City, they can go out and clean up our beaches.”

She’s hoping to get at least four hotels on board, “Our first hotel that we’ve signed on for this summer with our program is the Fenwick Islander in North Ocean City, right on the border of Ocean City and Fenwick. So, they’re going to start out with some bags and hopefully they will need some more as the summer rolls on.”

Even with their efforts, they still find a lot of trash, and this can be detrimental for wildlife. Wells says, “It definitely impacts our wildlife. Plastic bags float around in the ocean and plastic food wrappers look like jellyfish, and things like turtles will eat it and then choke on them. We’ve all seen videos of straws in turtles noses and inside turtles mouths and, you know, making it very difficult for them to survive.”

She adds that this also has an effect on beach goers’ health, “We don’t want people going out there and stepping on trash and getting cuts and scrapes and infections from it, but I think the main issue right now is with microplastics. When plastics are constantly being broken down in the environment, they’ve started to find microplastics in absolutely everything and the more things you eat, the more it works its way up the food chain, the more microplastics are going to be in your diet and just part of your body, which is very unhealthy.”

They have seen a positive impact with their clean ups and different projects, but their mission is not over, and Wells tells me they’re always looking for volunteers. With their continuous work, she says, “Ocean City does have a green team that the Surfrider Foundation, our chapter, is a part of. All of the local environmental organizations are part of this green team and we meet once a month and just discuss all the different ways that Ocean City can be more eco-friendly.”

Other ways to help is to not leave trash on our beaches, and take everything with you. For more information on future events and cleanups, visit their website.