Volunteers not rained out

Braving soggy weather and toting metal trash pickers and plastic bags, more than 50 volunteers slogged through the streets of Newport Beach on Saturday to pick up trash out of gutters and on local beaches.

The effort was part of the group ZeroTrash Newport’s fourth monthly First Saturday beach and street cleanup.

“It’s pretty simple. We’re trying to promote personal responsibility,” said Eric Chevalier, one of the organizers of the Saturday cleanup effort. “If you see trash, pick it up.”

A coalition of area environmental groups including the Earth Resource Foundation and the Newport Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, ZeroTrash aims to get trash off local streets by organizing the monthly cleanups.

One group of volunteers found a Von’s shopping cart on the beach. Another group found a mannequin head.

Cigarette butts, plastic bottle tops and Styrofoam were by far the most ubiquitous finds, said Stephanie Barger, executive director of the environmental group Earth Resource Foundation.

“When you find litter on the streets, it’s too late,” Barger said. “Plastic and Styrofoam aren’t biodegradable — it shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

By the time litter ends up on the beach in Newport, much of it has probably floated down from one of the 26 cities along the Santa Ana River that empties into the Pacific, said Darrel Ferguson, secretary for the Newport Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

“We need to stop this at its source, before it ends up on the beach,” he said. “People need to take responsibility for it.”

In addition to the usual cigarette butts and beer bottles littered throughout the neighborhoods, heavy rain left an array of trash scattered across the shoreline: plastic bags, aerosol cans, ribbons and tampon applicators.

“It’s the cigarettes that really bother me,” said Aaron Wdowin, an environmental science major from Brown. “They blend in with the mulch, and it’s just so gross.”

Wdowin traveled from Santa Barbara to help his friend Chevalier with the event.

“It’s all about the environment,” he said.

Founded by Laguna Beach resident Chip McDermott in 2007, ZeroTrash is a nonprofit dedicated to ridding city streets of trash, reducing waste, supporting local businesses and fostering environmental responsibility.

Fed up with seeing trash littered on Laguna’s streets — which also makes its way into storm drains and washes up on beaches — McDermott said he felt inspired to do something about it.

“It amazes me that it was so commonplace and people could just step over the trash and think nothing of it,” he said. “I didn’t want our town to look that way, so something needed to be done.”

ZeroTrash has just expanded its efforts to Dana Point. It now hopes to take the project to more Orange County cities, and further.

“Our goal is to take this national,” McDermott said.

How To Help

For information about how you can get involved, donate or sponsor, visit www.zerotrash.org and go to Newport Beach under “communities” or e-mail Eric Chevalier at [email protected].