Volunteering for a Wounded Nature – Working Veterans Beach Cleanup
Some people refer to our cleanups as “An Extreme Beach Cleanup”. We call it, making a real impact on saving wildlife and cleaning up the environment.
Volunteering for a Wounded Nature – Working Veterans beach clean-up event is different than participating in most other beach clean-ups. First, we expect you to bring your own supplies. We do not want to contribute to the problem by introducing more plastics and single use materials into the environment.
Wounded Nature – Working Veterans cleanups take place regardless of weather with one exception – lightning. If the water is extremely rough, we will clean the areas we can get to on bad weather days.
You will be on site for four hours in an area without facilities. If nature calls, you will have to find a secluded area, dig a small hole and bury your waste. We will try to have some single sex teams on each clean up to offer some privacy.
If you are still interested and think you can work in this type of an environment, this is what you need to bring:
- Each person should have their own reusable bags , because it contradicts the purpose of cleaning up pollution to collect items in a disposable plastic garbage bags.
- personal water for drinking in a reusable container
- snack
- gloves
- sunscreen or rain jacket
- bacterial lotion
- insect repellent (in many areas the gnats and mosquitoes will swarm if you are not wearing repellent).
- toilet paper on remote beaches
- shoes other than sandals and flip flops
- a positive attitude
- work ethic
- camera
Actual cleanup
Each area will be covered by a team twice. When deposited by boat the team will do a sweep going to the end of their area of responsibility and sweep again as they return to the boat. Each area based on terrain will require a different approach. If there is a large trash collection point, the team leader may want to place the entire team in that area. In other areas the team may be spread out on the beach just collecting cigarette butts.
Each piece of litter collected makes a difference, regardless of size.
