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Beach Cleaning

Beach Cleaning

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beach cleaning or clean-up is the process of solid litters or dense chemicals from a beach or coastline. Humans pollute beaches with materials such as plastic bottles and bags, plastic straws, fishing gear, cigarette filters, and many other items that cause environmental degradation. The discarded items include flotsam, jetsam, oil spills, detritus such as driftwood, seaweed or dead marine animals. Every year hundreds of thousands of volunteers comb the beaches and coastlines around the world for marine pollution. These contaminants are called “marine debris” and the quantity of debris has been increasing by anthropocentric activities.

There are some major sources of beach debris such as beach users, oceans, and seas drifts and river flow. Many beach users leave their litters behind on the beaches after beach activities. Also, some marine debris or some chemicals such as raw oil drift from oceans or seas onto lands and accumulate on beaches. Or, many rivers bring some cities' trashes to beaches. These pollutants harms to marine life and ecology, human health, and coastal tourism. Hartley et al.’s (2015) study show that environmental education is important to eliminate many beach pollutant on beaches and marine environment.

The Causes and Sources of Marine Debris

There are two causes of the degradation of marine ecology and marine debris: the direct forces (population growth, technological development, and economic growth) and proximity forces (land transformation and industrial processes). We can think of the direct forces as underlying causes of why we consume an excessive amount of goods by industry process. The excessive consumption of goods causes marine debris because the goods have been packaged by manufactured cheap non-recycle materials such as plastic. Solid waste plastics cannot decompose easily in nature and their decomposition process takes thousands of years to million years but plastic breaks down into continuously smaller pieces (>5 mm) forming that is called micro-plastics . Thus, such solid waste products are called marine debris that can be seen all through coastlines and on many beaches through the world . There can be many sources of marine debris such as land-based, marine-based, and other anthropocentric activities.

Million tons of land-based waste products such as plastics, papers, woods, and metals end up in seas, oceans, and beaches through the wind, oceans currents (five major gyres), sewage, runoff, storm-water drains and rivers. Massive amount of marine debris has become a severe menace to the marine environment, aquatic life and humankind. Most land-based sources are illegal dumping, landfills, and petrochemical and other industry disposals. Also, other marine-based sources originate from anthropocentric marine activities that are drifted fishing lines, nets, plastic ropes or other petrochemical products from remote islands or lands, shipping vessels or fishing boats by wind and oceanic currents. What’s more, marine debris source is also anthropocentric activities of local populations such as beach goers, tourists and city or town sewage.

Montesinos et al, (2020) study of the total amount of 16,123 beach litter items to determine the source of marine debris at 40 bathing areas along the coast of Cádiz, Spain. The study displays that the sources of 88.5% of plastics, 67% cigarette butts, and cloth litters are related to the activity of beach-goers and tourists, 5.5% of cotton bud sticks, wet wipes, sanitary towels, tampons, and condoms are related to wastewater discharges at places close to rivers and tidal creeks mouths. Besides, the sources of 2.1% fishing lines, nets, and 0.6% Styrofoam are related to fishing activities and marine sources. Besides, some marine debris indicates that they are dumped directly by some international ships or by tourists into the sea on the beach from different countries such as hard food container (from Portugal), a bottle cap (Morocco), a cleaner bottle (Turkey), a food wrapper and other items related to navigation (Germany). Montesinos et al.’s study (2020) demonstrate that some marine debris can travel hundreds of kilometers and end up very far from its source because of the ocean and sea currents.

Also, tropical and subtropical islands are marine pollution hot spots as their relatively vulnerable ecosystems are being severely affected by both local and foreign marine debris. de Scisciolo et al. (2016) study on ten beaches along the leeward and windward coastlines of Aruba that is one of the Lesser Antilles islands located in the Southern Caribbean Sea. They try to determine differences of marine debris in macro (<25 mm), meso-debris (2-25 mm) and micro-debris (>2 mm) densities. The result of their study shows that meso-debris which are rounded plastic products are found on the windward coastlines because the windward coastlines experience higher pressure from distal marine-based debris. Natural factors such as wind and oceanic currents cause the accumulation and distribution of plastic meso-debris to windward coastlines. And, macro-debris that contains a larger proportion of originating from eating, drinking and smoking and recreational activities are found leeward sites of the island because the leeward sites experience higher pressures from local land-based debris such as eating, drinking litters and plastic straws.

Benefits of Beach Cleaning

Beach cleaning has many benefits for human health, ecology, and sustainability goals and tourism economy.

Public Health

Clean beaches have many benefits for human health because the polluted beaches may imperil human lives by beach accidents. Many items left on beaches such as broken glasses, sharp metals, or hard plastics may injure beach-goers physically. Also, marine debris such as fishing gear or nets may risk human life on the beaches. Such pollutants may be a trap for beach users and cause very serious injuries or drowning accidents for tourists.

Beach Cleaning for Human Health

A clean beaches have many benefits for ecology and human health, because the polluted beaches may imperil human and wildlife such as marine and land animal. The litters such as broken glasses, sharp metals, or hard plastics may cause human and animal injuries. Also, the marine debris such as fishing gears or nests may risk human life on the beaches because such pollutants may cause very serious injuries or drowning accidents for tourists.

Ecology

Researches on marine debris have substantially increased our knowledge of the amount and composition of marine debris as well as its impacts on the marine environment, aquatic life and people. Marine debris is very harmful to marine organisms such as plants, invertebrates, fish, seabirds, sea turtles and other large marine mammals. Marine debris contains plastic liters that are composed of industrial chemicals or toxins. These chemicals can be destructive to aquatic organisms because toxins accumulate in the tissues of marine organisms and they cause specific effects such as behavioral changes and alterations in metabolic processes. Also, a combination of plastic and seawater materials such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals can be fatal for marine life. Moreover, consumption of micro-plastics by larger marine organisms cause obstructions of the intestinal tract that leads to starvation and death because of reduced energy fitness. According to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, 111 out of the world’s 312 species of seabirds, 26 species of marine mammals, and six out of seven of the words species of sea turtles have experienced issues with beach litter ingestion. Some recent studies reveal that micro-plastics might impact on human health due to consumption of marine organisms by humans, but there is not enough evidence.

In addition to all these impacts, the marine debris and beach litter pose dangers to wildlife on the beaches and marine ecology. Many beach pollutants such as fishing gears and nets or oil spills jeopardize many sea animals including sea turtles, seabirds, and dolphins, and can cause serious injuries or death. Marine animals can become trapped by contaminants such as fishing lines or nets.

Sustainability

Clean beaches are indicators of the environmental quality and sustainable development level of a country. Some developed countries have been trying to reach their sustainable goals by sustainable plans. The Beach Cleaning Health Index that is a cleaning classification method of European countries and their environments. The index is the determiner of sustainability and cleanness the countries and their beaches through classification notes such as A for excellent, B for good, C for regular, and D for bad.

Tourism

Beaches are recreational areas and attract many local or international visitors through sunbathing, swimming, walking or surfing activities. This coastal tourism is important for many countries because tourism activities contribute to a large faucet of their economy. Therefore, a polluted beach or coastline may substantially impact the countries economy. The contaminated beaches have become a global concern since the beginning of industrialization. Contaminated beaches are unattractive for international and local tourists due to aesthetic value or health concerns. Hutchings et al. 's (2000) study shows that a clean beach is a very important determiner of many local and international tourists in South Africa. According to the study, local and international tourists choose to visit the country because of the beauty of beaches and the proper climate the conditions of country. If the tourists do not find their expectation met on a beach, they can travel to other beaches to find a better one in the country. So, beach cleanliness is very important for countries and the tourism industry nowadays.

Beach Cleaning Methods

For visitors

The process of beach cleaning requires good management methods, adequate human resources, and funds. Solid litters cleaning methods are very different than oil spill cleaning methods. The beach cleaning process may be done using machinery such as sand cleaning machines that rake or sift the sand or/and other chemicals such as oil dispersants. This beach cleaning may be done by professionals company, civic organizations,the military or volunteers such as the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup and Marine Conservation Society.

The Maps of the Most Polluted and Cleanest Beaches on the World

• The map of most polluted beaches:
  Many researchers report that the ocean currents transfer floating litter in the five subtropical gyres and anthropocentric marine debris present all habitats of oceans, beaches, and sea surface, even Arctic sea ice contains small plastics particles or micro-plastics. But some beaches are worse than others because the old pristine beaches have turned into trash heaps. According to Bhatia (2019), the ten most polluted beaches in the world:

1.      Phu Quoc, Vietnam

2.       Maya Bay, Thailand

3.       Kamilo Beach, Hawaii, USA.

4.       Kuta Beach, Indonesia.

5.      Juhu Beach, India. ...

6.      Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

7.      Guanabara Bay, Brazil.

8.      Serendipity Beach, Cambodia.

9.      Haina, Dominican Republic.

10.  San Clemente Pier, California, USA.

• The maps of the cleanest beaches:
  According to Nguyen (2019), there are still some clean beaches around the world. To find out if a beach is clean or not is by looking for a blue flag. The Blue Flag is the world’s most recognized voluntary eco-labels awarded to beaches, marinas, and sustainable boating tourism operators. The blue flag shows when a beach has high environmental and quality standards. The six the cleanest Blue Flag awarded beaches list:

1.      Victoria Beach, Canada.

2.      Santa Maria Beach, Los Cabos.

3.      Dado Beach, Israel.

4.      Mellieha Bay, Malta.

5.      Palmestranden Beach, Denmark.

6.      Zona Balnear da Lagoa, Portugal.

Gallery

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  Contaminated beach
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  Contaminated Beach
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