Plumb Beach Earth Day cleanup

To celebrate Earth Day 2012 and improve New York City for wildlife and humans, we will be cleaning Plumb Beach in Brooklyn on Saturday April 21st. This beach is a mecca for local beachgoers, windsurfers, picnickers, and fishermen/women. It's also an important site for waterbirds that are migrating through our area on their epic journey northward in the spring. In addition, thousands of horseshoe crabs come ashore in the spring to lay their eggs, which is an awesome spectacle of nature right here in New York City. Because of its heavy use, a lot of garbage piles up on the beach. We will be cleaning the beach and adjacent marsh of garbage, to make it a better place for humans and other wildlife.

Garbage piles up on Plumb Beach when people throw their trash there and also when it washes up with the waves. Pieces large and small can pile up on the beach and make it harder for everyone - human and animal alike - to use and enjoy the beach. We will spread out along the length of the beach to collect garbage large and small and transport that garbage to the parking lot area for pickup by the National Park Service. It is very important to do this at the beginning of the spring/summer season before the trash gets more buried and embedded in the environment there.

New Yorkers - be they human or non-human - have a limited variety of green spaces we can enjoy. We need to protect our green spaces so they can benefit us for years to come. Plumb Beach is an amazing site at the mouth of Jamaica Bay, a gem that is beloved by local people - perhaps too beloved at times. Large amounts of trash can pile up on the beach, which negatively impacts everything that uses it. But there is a solution - removing the garbage makes the beach better for everyone and raises awareness about the issue of coastal pollution. Please join us as we try to make Plumb Beach and Brooklyn and New York City better places!