World Surfing Reserve Clean Up Recap

Plastic pollution has now been found on every beach in the world. From Antarctica to Seabright State Beach, if you walk the beach you will find plastic trash on the beach--- and lots of it. Over the weekend Surfrider Santa Cruz was super stoked to partner with Save The Waves and Bureo Skateboards to help reduce the amount of trash (including plastic) that enters the ocean in our world surfing reserve here in Santa Cruz. In two hours at Seabright State Beach, 53 volunteers removed 1,226 cigarette butts, 37 lbs of recycling, and 79.2 lbs of trash, keeping 116.2 lbs of garbage from heading out to sea and off of our beach!

Chapter Co-Chair Matt Kuhn who helped lead the clean up, "We could have cleaned the beach for 10 hours and still not made a dent in the massive amount of trash on the beach. Almost as if trash was magically re-appearing... We found endless amounts of plastic, nails, broken glass, knifes, condoms, bottle caps, and everything else in between. Once you start really looking at how trashed the beach is you can't stop picking up the trash, it's addicting, and you can't help but picking up another gross dirty cigarette butt." Sheridan Bowman, Ewa Libre, Amber Jones, and Jim Littlefield were all at the clean up representing Surfrider as well! Also a huge thanks Santa Cruz Waves for making it out and to City Council member Hilary Bryant for attending the clean up with her daughter!

Surfrider was also stoked to welcome  Bureo Skateboards to Santa Cruz, the world’s first recycled skateboard made from marine debris (used fishing nets) prevents more than thirty square feet of harmful plastic fishnet from entering the ocean and supports Chilean fishing communities. A new venture based in the US and Chile, Bureo Skateboards is dedicated to finding solutions for the growing issue of ocean plastic pollution through the team’s initiative, ‘Net Positiva’, where they recycle fishnets into skateboards.

“Santa Cruz is a huge part of the surf/skate culture in California, and we are looking forward to getting up North to help out with the clean-up, share our new boards with the community and hopefully grab a couple waves. We were fortunate enough to participate in Save The Waves’ efforts in Chile this year during their annual coastal clean-up campaign, ‘Unidos por Aguas Limpias’, shared David Stover, Bureo’s CEO, “STW and Surfrider play a critical role in stewarding the coastal environment, a resource that we all cherish and need to work together to protect.”

This is Surfrider Santa Cruz's second clean up with Save The Waves Coalition this year, and we couldn't be more stoked to partner with them! Huge thanks to Nick Mucha and Gavin Comstock for everything they have done to help make these clean ups a huge success! Save The Waves is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving the coastal environment, with an emphasis on the surf zone, and educating the public about its value. They are a devoted group of surfers, scientists, and activists, who share a common belief that our wild coastal areas around the world are precious and valuable, and need to be protected.

We hope that everyone who enjoys the beach helps to protect it as much as they do to enjoy it. Pick up a couple pieces of trash the next time you visit a beach, if you see someone leaving trash behind ask them to pick it up in order to help keep Santa Cruz beaches and our World Surfing Reserve clean. Bring your own reusable water bottle instead of using single use plastic drinks (we collected hundreds of plastic water caps at the clean up). If you see a piece of trash blowing away in the wind, CHASE it down! Check out all of the pictures from our Seabright Clean Up, and we hope to see you out at a future beach clean up!

- Matt Kuhn - Co-Chair - Surfrider Santa Cruz

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