Volunteers Pick Up Everything 



Tar Heel citizens made a Big 

 Sweep across North Carolina. They 

 turned out in record numbers 

 Sept. 22 from the mountains to the 

 coast to pick up litter from the state's 

 beaches, lakes, rivers and streams. 



Armed with garbage bags donated 

 by GLAD and data cards to record 

 their trashy finds, more than 9,000 

 North Carolinians bagged 160 tons of 

 trash along Tar Heel shorelines. 



Approximately 160 sites across the 

 state were designated for pickup dur- 

 ing The Big Sweep '90, the nation's 

 largest statewide waterway cleanup. 



Big Sweep '90 was the most suc- 

 cessful cleanup in the history of the 

 event, which began in 1987. The 1990 

 litter totals were double the amount 

 of trash collected in 1989. And 

 volunteers almost tripled. In 1989, 

 3,600 volunteers bagged 81.5 tons of 

 debris. 



Volunteer turnout for this year's 

 1990 pickup was heaviest along the 

 beaches and in the Triangle and 

 Charlotte areas. Along the Tar Heel 

 coast, 6,600 volunteers collected 81.5 

 tons of debris— half of the state 

 debris tonnage. 



Showers in the mountains and 

 northern Piedmont put a damper on 

 the cleanup in those areas, reducing 

 volunteers and the amount of litter 

 collected. 



In their efforts to tidy up our 

 shorelines, volunteers bagged 

 everything from cigarette butts to the 

 kitchen sink. 



Unusual finds included an in- 

 flatable woman, a two-ton truck, a 

 1947 Orange Crush bottle, a boarding 

 pass from a Pakistan airlines, an un- 

 opened bottle of pickled pig brains, 

 a band leader's hat, a disassembled 

 houseboat and a pay phone. 



And although it's these bizarre 

 finds that capture initial attention, 

 it's the more mundane trash that 

 keeps Big Sweep organizers planning 

 cleanups. 



Again, plastic and plastic foam 

 items— beverage containers, jugs, 

 lids, cups, cartons— were prevalent at 

 all sites. 



Along the beaches, volunteers and 

 site coordinators reported finding 

 abandoned beach chairs, discarded 

 crab traps, lumber, metal and lots of 

 cigarette butts. 



Emerald Isle site coordinator Jean 

 Zappia says her volunteers amassed 

 more than 10,000 cigarette butts. 

 That's more butts than were collected 

 for the entire state during the 1989 

 Big Sweep. At Lake Wheeler in 

 Raleigh, another 3,953 butts were 

 reported. 



Cigarette butts, or filters, were a 

 new item listed on this year's data 

 cards. Although many people con- 

 sider the paper-covered filters 

 biodegradable, they are not. Most are 

 made of a synthetic material called 

 cellulose acetate. 



Hundreds of deflated balloons 

 scattered the beach at the Pea Island 

 Wildlife Refuge on Hatteras Island. 

 Site coordinator Bonnie Strawser 

 said she was surprised by the num- 

 ber collected. One couple picked up 

 92 balloons in a short stretch of 

 beach. 



At Radio Island near Morehead 

 City, Bruce Naegelen's volunteers 

 sacked bag after bag of military 

 debris— cans of MRE's (meals ready 

 to eat), flares and other items. 



But no matter what kind of debris 

 they confronted, volunteers were 



Big Sweep 

 Statistics* 



"Listed compiled with data from 90 percent of the sites 



Northern Beaches 3,514 volunteers . . . .50.4 tons 



Central Beaches 616 18.6 



Southeast 1,870 18.0 



Southern Coastal Plain 97 1.3 



Northern Coastal Plain 401 5.7 



Triangle 1,168 17.6 



Triad 283 8.0 



Charlotte Area 930 25.8 



Northern Mountains 115 2.6 



Southern Mountains 264 10.8 



