SAN DIEGO — Bottles, plastic wrappers, cigarette butts, used batteries.
You name it, it’s cluttering our coastline after all the rain. It flows from Tijuana and from storm drains all over San Diego directly into our ocean and onto our beaches.
Lillie Mulligan is with Wild Coast, working to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems. She says the coastline from Tijuana and through San Diego is the most trashed she’s ever seen it.
“I cannot go a day on the beach without seeing microfibers from plastics on the sand. It looks like almost confetti was thrown over the beaches," she said. "This seaweed is washed up ashore. There’s critters in there. Seagulls want to eat out of that, but look, it’s covered in trash.”
Gregor Coffaro started Purpose First Beach Cleanup, a nonprofit that works with local businesses to clean up around Pacific Beach. They had an event with more than 100 volunteers this past weekend.
“In an hours time, we picked up 345 pounds of trash," he said. "We really only have about 12 square blocks that we find all of that trash. We notice a lot more pollution after heavy rains or floods.”
That’s where the problem lies.
All these pieces of plastic, Styrofoam, and wrappers aren’t just from people’s day at the beach. It all flowed here from Tijuana and from San Diego’s rushing, gushing stormwater," Mulligan said.
“These storms were kind of lifting everything up that was settled inland and bringing it all to the coast," she said. "And we’re seeing that come all the way down the coast through waterways, river valleys through Tijuana and it's making its way here."
She says most of the trash we see along the coast of California comes from Tijuana because they don’t have a way to manage the trash there. She said the trash also comes from out in the ocean, where there are patches of plastic and garbage floating together and the storm brings them in.
Mulligan and Coffaro both say everyone needs to be more mindful about the plastic we use. Try not to use it. And make sure your trash actually stays in the trash and recycle bins.
If you live in East County and a piece of trash flies out of your bin on trash day, it could very well end up sitting in the sand on our beautiful beaches.
“Your trash is going to end up in the ocean," Mulligan said. "There's no filters here. there's nothing stopping your trash from your trash cans that fall over to end up in the ocean it all leads this way.”
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