Online registration now open to volunteers for 32nd annual Delaware Coastal Cleanup

Online volunteer registration is now open for the 32nd annual Delaware Coastal Cleanup, to be held from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 14. Sponsored by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, the cleanup spans the First State’s 97-mile eastern coastline and includes river and ocean shorelines as well as wetland and watershed areas. This year, volunteers will focus on more than 45 sites in New Castle, Kent and Sussex counties for cleanup.

Individual volunteers and groups are strongly encouraged to preregister on DNREC’s website at https://de.gov/coastalcleanup to ensure enough supplies are readied for each site. Preregistration will close Monday, Sept. 2.

Groups of 10 volunteers or more also are asked to contact Delaware Coastal Cleanup Coordinator Joanna Wilson, 302-739-9902, or email [email protected], or to contact the appropriate zone captain listed on the website for advance site placement.

At last year’s Coastal Cleanup, 1,115 dedicated volunteers from civic organizations, youth groups, businesses and families collected 2.7 tons of trash from 42 sites along Delaware’s shorelines and tributaries. Cleanup volunteers’ more unusual finds included a dishwasher, a message in a bottle from 2007, a knife in a sheath, mattress springs, scissors, charcoal grill, pirate hat, car muffler, beach chair, bushel baskets, street sign, key card, glow stick, ink cartridge, pacifier, pith helmet, car console, golf club handle, metal canopy frame, a troll doll, a Nintendo game controller, and a Rubik’s Cube.

Delaware’s Cleanup is part of the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, the world’s largest annual clearing of trash from coastlines, rivers, streams, and lakes by volunteers. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world help each year to rid the environment of marine debris and collect detailed information on the types and quantities of refuse they find. Information is recorded on data cards and sent to the Center for Marine Conservation, which compiles data for all cleanups to help identify debris sources and focus efforts on eliminating or reducing marine debris. For more information, visit www.oceanconservancy.org.

For more information about the Delaware Coastal Cleanup, please call DNREC Public Affairs at 302-739-9902.