Venice Beach Clean Up And How To Be A Friend Of The Ocean

An inflated balloon, a soggy wine cork and other trash — these are some of the items gathered Monday during a clean up at Venice Beach in honor of Earth Day.

Robert Trumper, CEO of Ecological Servants Project, which organized the event, said more than 160 people participated in the clean up.

“To know that they're doing good for the community, for the earth, and for the marine life in the oceans by removing this litter," he said. "They go home and they think about this after the cleanup. They tell people about it afterwards. And this lives on with them for the rest of their lives.”

Justin Deanda joined the clean up effort from El Segundo and was inspired to join because he spends so much time at the beach with his daughter.

“It's worse than you think,” he said about the trash at the beach. “I feel like a lot of times when people leave trash behind, they think, what's one piece of trash, what's one bottle or lid?”

West Hollywood resident Grant Pennel said he thinks people should pick up after themselves, “If you eat fish or anything, you could be eating your own trash, so I mean pay attention to that.”

Where is all the trash coming from?

Beach cleanups are the last line of defense before trash ends up in the ocean. In 2023, Tracy Quinn, president and CEO of Heal The Bay, said the group’s volunteers collected more than 22,000 pounds of trash from beachfront areas.

As our culture shifts to one of convenience, Quinn said the most common types of trash picked up during beach cleanups are single use plastics like bottle caps, straws, fast food containers and chip bags. Another common item is cigarette butts.

The trickle down effect

“The big issue with single-use plastics is that those plastics, as they come down through our storm drain system, they break into smaller and smaller pieces,” she said. “When they get bashed around in the surf and they enter our ocean, they're smaller pieces and the fish see them and they think that they're food. And they're not.”

Chemicals found in single-use plastics can break down and leak into marine life that ingest them, affecting our food supply.

According to Quinn, around 80% of the trash on the beaches comes from inland communities. And during years that see heavy rains, even more trash and pollutants pass through the storm drains into the ocean.

“Whether you live in Pasadena or Pacoima or Malibu or Santa Monica, any trash that is on our streets finds its way onto roadways or other things,” she said. “It gets washed into our storm drain system and right out into the ocean without treatment and a lot of that washes back up on shore.”