Volunteers pick up trash to clean up after Fourth of July celebrations

TAMPA, Fla., (WFLA) — Beach clean ups are underway Friday morning to pick up any mess from Fourth of July celebrations.

Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful’s event is all about picking up trash along the Courtney Campbell Causeway. There will also be clean ups happening at Cypress Point Park.

Officials said they expect to collect around 500 pounds of trash.

Celebrating the Fourth is an American Tradition, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave all your trash behind.

“All that’s going to happen is, it’s either going to rain hard and bring it right into the ocean or the wildlife is going to get to it and bring it that much closer where potentially we’re not going to be able to get it when our volunteers do come cleanup,” said Kristina Moreta, Development Director with Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful.

Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful is rallying volunteers to pick up the trash. They said it’s usually picking up things like plates, plastic forks, solo cups, and firework debris.

“Fourth of July is a little bit of a different animal, just because it may not be thousands of pounds, but it’s a lot of little debris,” Moreta said. “So, we’re having a lot of little things, and it takes a lot of time to pick it up.”

Those helping to clean up said the best advice for people is if the trash cans are overflowing, take your trash with you.

By people picking up after themselves, Moreta said it will help out the volunteers.

“We’re going to have them spread out pretty much every way of Courtney Campbell and they kind of go as far as they can and bring it back. We’ll weigh everything when they bring it back,” she said.

Everyone who volunteered is lending a hand to help preserve the ocean and wildlife in the area.

“If you look around, you can see how beautiful the beaches are, like if you’re coming here to celebrate, that’s great, but make sure you’re leaving it better than how you found it,” Moreta said.

If you would like to volunteer, click here.

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