||| FROM JESS NEWLEY for FRIENDS OF THE SAN JUANS |||
Friends of the San Juans and Plastic Free Salish Sea are thrilled to announce that Heather Trim of Zero Waste Washington will be hosting a community beach cleanup at Jackson Beach on San Juan Island during the Fall Great Islands Cleanup on Saturday, September 30th.
Heather is the Executive Director of Zero Waste Washington, a nonprofit organization dedicated to driving policy change for a healthy and waste-free world. She will provide training on the EPA’s (Environmental Protection Agency) Escaped Trash Protocol (ETAP), offering San Juan County community members, volunteers, teachers, and students the opportunity to collect data during beach and road cleanups and contribute to the solution for mitigating plastic pollution, marine debris, and other litter in our environment. The data collected will be added to a statewide database to inform policy change in the region.
According to Zero Waste WA’s website, this new protocol is intended for use by anyone, particularly community science and volunteer groups (EPA, 2021). The protocol can serve multiple purposes, such as comparing cleanup results at a specific site over time to assess mitigation effectiveness and determine further steps to reduce trash. Additionally, it can help identify problem areas where trash accumulates during dry weather due to littering or dumping and during wet weather due to accumulation from upstream sources. Finally, the data can be instrumental in evaluating the effectiveness of targeted management measures and providing evidence for groups advocating for policy change (EPA, 2021).
Join us in taking meaningful action! This training will be held at Jackson Beach on San Juan Island from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM on Saturday, September 30th. For more information, please contact Jess Newley, Community Science and Education Director at Friends of the San Juans, via email at jess@sanjuans.org.
Share your cleanup adventures and help spread the word on Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #GICU2023. Visit plasticfreesalishsea.org/
