Evidently, our beach is an ash tray. At least that is how many of the Grand Strand’s tourists and locals treat it.

During the Sept. 17 beach sweep, beach sweep volunteers picked up over 4,000 cigarette butts, in a 3-block area! Don’t believe it? Well, that’s not all. Have you noticed recently how clean your beach seems to be? Thank the volunteers who participated up and down the Grand Strand for the National Beach Sweep held Sept. 17.

Of the many Surfrider volunteers that participated, Julie Farmer and Jim Van Dyke helped out with the crew gathered at the Sea Captains House in Myrtle Beach, led by Pat Pierce of the M.B. Intermediate School. Students, teachers and others helped pick up trash, working in staggered shifts for about two hours.

The items collected from our crew in a 2-3 block area included the follwing:

• bags: 3
• balloons: 12
• beverage cans: 4
• caps, lids: 99
• clothing, shoes: 5
• ribbon: 3
• bait containers: 1
• fishing line: 3
• fishing lures: 1
• cig’s/cig filters: 4,020 – (WOW! 3 block area in less than 2 hours)
• cigar tips: 21
• tobacco wrappers: 4
• condoms: 2
• tampons: 1
• cups, plates, etc.: 12
• food wrappers 79
• pull tabs: 2
• fireworks: 38

Besides a cleaner beach, these volunteers helped protect sea life, including sea turtles, that often mis-identify some of these items as food and ingest them, often leading to death.

Remember these numbers the next time you or someone you know wants to throw their cigarette butt out the window of the car, bury them in the sand while on the beach, shoot fireworks on the ocean front, bring food, drinks or toys to the beach, or disposes of fishing gear while fishing on a pier or boat.

Thank you volunteers for all the great work. You are heroes to us.