Bag It After You Pop It

The tradition of celebrating independence on the 4th of July with fireworks began in 1777. During the last nearly 250 years we have certainly seen the festivities increase from the original 13-gun salute honoring the 13 colonies.

While traditionally a 5th of July effort is implemented to cleanup the afterparty, this has not been enough to deal with the impacts of the tremendous amount of fireworks being discharged at the beach. The sheer volume of firework revelries leaves debris scattered along the shoreline or swept into the ocean with overnight high tides.

In an effort to keep the debris from entering the ocean, groups like the Grassroots Garbage Gang have doubled their cleanup impact on the Long Beach Peninsula. Volunteers stop vehicles going out to the beach on the afternoon of the 4th to pass out bags and encourage people to cleanup after themselves and the area around them. Further to the north at Seabrook, they were also disheartened to see the ocean take the fireworks debris out to sea and have implemented an awareness campaign as well as having bags available throughout their properties encouraging cleaning the beach on the 4th.

These efforts would not be possible without the support of Washington State Parks, Washington Surfrider, the Coastal Interpretive Center in Ocean Shores and of course the Grassroots Garbage Gang and Seabrook.