Broward County Waterway Clean-up

My Experience

I found a safe and convenient way to volunteer during the COVID pandemic. I signed up to do a waterway clean-up for the 44th Annual Broward County Water Way Clean-Up. The whole process is recorded through the Ocean Conservancy Swell App. I was able to sign up for a clean-up near me through the app. I picked a park where there’s a lake, I was able to show up at my convenience and start cleaning up. Everything is you pick up is inventoried through the app. This makes you accountable for your clean-up while the app tracks the hours and amount of trash that you pick up.

“Beaches are Florida’s most valuable asset. They are culturally and economically important and provide habitat for many species, as well as storm and flood protection for coastal communities.”

J.P. Brooker – Director of Florida Conservation Ocean Conservancy

I didn’t think there would be that much trash at a park but I was surprised by the amount of trash we found. It’s a bit difficult to pick up trash and record every piece as the app asks you to do. They suggest that one person pick up and the other record on the app. You are supposed to record every piece and type of trash, which can get in the way of actually cleaning up. However, it’s cool is that at the end you know exactly what you found. I want to try and do another clean-up before the end of the month.

Broward Waterway Clean-up

Below is the email Swell sends you after you have completed your clean-up

I didn’t expect to find so much trash at my local park!

Swell App

Scholarly Article Review

“This is our next problem”: Cleaning up from the COVID-19 response

Authors:

Marc Kalina   – South African Research Chair in Waste and Climate Change, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Centenary Building, Howard College Campus, Durban 4001, South Africa

Elizabeth Tilley- Department of Environmental Health, University of Malawi, The Polytechnic, Blantyre, Malawi

Summary

This scholarly article talks about how COVID waste is now becoming a problem in our oceans and overall. At first, COVID resulted in quarantine, which resulted in less human waste, emissions, and such. Now after quarantine has ended and with mask mandates and increased use of single-use products, there has been an increase in waste. The article calls for interdisciplinary awareness of how changing attitudes towards waste brought on by COVID will exacerbate an already severe waste management issue.

Authors

I was able to find a good amount of results when I searched for Elizabeth Tilley. Google Scholar shows two-plus pages of articles she has written.

Kalina’s Google search shows about three pages of results but not as rich as Tilley’s, with about 28 articles on Google Scholar.

Target Audience

The article appeals to lay audiences who are concerned about the environment. It also addresses a more scholarly audience as it speaks about the waste management industry.  Therefore the article targets those in the waste management industry. However, it also targets a global audience as it discusses the waste generated by the pandemic in Spain and Hong Kong. The language is easy to understand as there is not much technical language used.

Personal Reaction

“the Covid-19 pandemic has served as an opportunity for the plastics industry to restore a legitimacy to single-use plastic products that had eroded over the past decade.”

I found the article fascinating because it shows the connection with various current issues causing a waste problem, specifically COVID,” the relationship between disasters, consumption, and disposability.” I was glad to hear that carbon emissions were down during the pandemic, and that more turtles were hatching due to there being fewer people on Florida beaches.

However, now the opposite is happening, according to the article. Since we were forced to use single-use products for safety reasons, we’ve reverted to the old mentality after the pandemic. This statement made me cringe “the Covid-19 pandemic has served as an opportunity for the plastics industry to restore a legitimacy to single-use plastic products that had eroded over the past decade.” Furthermore, the pictures in the article of masks showing up on oceans and shorelines were a reminder that, indeed, we have gone backward in many ways.

When I did my clean-up, I found gloves and probably a mask but not an alarming amount. The majority of the waste I picked up consisted of food wrappers. In conclusion, the article highlights that we are in a crucial moment. Right now, it’s imperative that we spread awareness on how our waste impacts the environment. I hope this makes it easier for everyone to set up their own waterway clean-up.

Learn more about the environment and animal conservation here

By: Charo O’Neil