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Sint Maarten International Coastal Cleanup Day - 16th September 2006

International Coastal Cleanup Website

On September 16th, over 450,000 people in over one hundred countries around the World will participate in the International Coastal Cleanup Day, picking up and removing over 8 mllion pounds (185,000 tons) of garbage and debris from the World's coastlines and waterways. Sint Maarten Pride is the offical organiser in St. Maarten and below you will find information on the program they have put together this year and how you can support it, or even better, participate.

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Sint Maarten Pride took over the task last year from the St. Maarten Heritage Foundation and did a good job of organising and involving several schools and a main event at Mullet Bay beach. This year they have hopes of doing much more, however that will really depend on you, the reader of this blog post.

This year Pride is co-ordinating with schools to carry out cleanups on several beaches during the week and a main event on Mullet Bay beach. They do this all on donations and with volunteers who give up time.

This is some of what they do.

Co-ordinate beaches and dates with the various schools and assisting where possible with transport and refreshments for the children.

Seek donations from distributors and grocery stores for refreshments, garbage bags, rakes and gloves.

Co-ordinate the data collection and the garbage collection with volunteers and trucks from Public Works.

Phone call costs, gasoline costs, sandwiches, photocopying of materials for the clean up and educational material for the schools.

Contribute a great deal of time and energy.

As you can see there is a lot to be done and not all of it can be obtained for free, and even more difficult when there are only 3 or 4 people doing it.

Ocean Care Foundation covers the underwater part of the clean up, organising dive and snorkel teams to clean up the sea floor in several locations. They are just like the Pride Foundation in that they are few in number and they do it using donations on a shoestring budget in much the same way. If they had more volunteers and funds they could do more.

The SXM PE shop will be launched in about 2 weeks and we will be starting with totally awesome shirts for SXM PE, SXM Pride and Ocean Care. Not plain old white shirts that stretch or shrink, but real nice ones, thick and high quality. We will be posting images up on here in a few days.

A donation of $40 right now will get you any one of those shirts, $100 and we will send all three. Whatever we can raise for the two foundations will be passed on before the 16th to help them out with their activities.

For those of you who can't afford to make a donation, like myself, there is another option, and that is to get involved and give up some of your time to help out. In the next few days contact information for SXM Pride and Ocean Care will be posted here and details on events and cleanups you can join will be added below.

It's not all hard work, hot yes, but not that hard. A hour 'beachcombing' then a break, a swim, a sandwich and then another hour 'beachcombing'. Or you may have some time to spare to assist the organisers by running errands and picking up donations. What is always guarenteed at these events is that you will meet some interesting people and make new friends.

It's really up to you people out there reading this now. Talk is easy, doing something takes effort. I hope you will get involved one way or another with helping to keep our island clean and and green and also supporting this website in it's efforts to raise awareness of the many problems St. Maarten faces.

Many thanks in advance to those who can and will make a donation and to those who can and will make a commitment to get involved.

Flipper

If you wish to learn more about the annual campaign, try The Ocean Conservancy - International Coastal Cleanup

News, photos and articles will be posted below

Results of Coastal Cleanup - 9th October 2006

St Maarten Coastal Cleanup 2006 - Photo Video

Sint Maarten Pride Coastal Cleanup 2006 - Photo Album 1
Sint Maarten Pride Coastal Cleanup 2006 - Photo Album 2
Sint Maarten Pride Coastal Cleanup 2006 - Photo Album 3
Ocean Care Int Underwater Coastal Cleanup 2006 - Photo Album

Saba Coastal clean up - 19th September 2006

Coastal Cleanup succesful - 18th September 2006

215 volunteers remove 908 kilos of trash from Mullet Bay Beach - 18th September 2006

Divers scoop up 20 kilos of underwater trash - 18th September 2006

Ocean Care to conduct underwater cleanup - 15th September 2006