These days everywhere you turn there is a new story about humans impact on the environment. You would think that with all this news and media coverage, environmentalism would be on peoples minds more often, making them more conscious of the effect that they have on our planet. That was not the case this Memorial Day Weekend at this Virginia beach. In just a few short days, party-goers left over 10 tons of trash in their wake for residents to take care of the next week.
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Every Memorial Day, there is a tradition called ‘Floatopia’, a giant party with boats, bikinis, and parties all taking place along the beach. It attracts thousands of people to the area in celebration of Memorial Day. This year, was a little more depressing. Nine volunteers from the Virginia Beach Public Works rallied around the Monday following the crazy weekend before dawn to clean up the trash that some described as looking like the aftermath of a tornado. “It was food wrappers, cans, bottles, pieces of floats, towels, everything. It was almost like they saw a tornado coming and everybody just got up and ran for safety and left everything there,” says Virginia Beach Public spokesperson Drew Lankford.
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Residents were very vocal about the way that these tourists left their beloved beach. “We can do better than this!” posted by a resident of the Chesapeake Bay area said, pretty much summing up locals feelings about the event. Others were a bit more hostile on social media. One user said “You are NOT welcome! Go back to your trash heap neighborhoods and don’t come back again.” Someone also suggested just moving the party to a landfill next year, and floating in the pond behind the landfill, he even went on to say that the tourists would feel more at home there.
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The massive amounts of pollution also attracted the attention of City Councilman Michael F. Berrlucchi. He took to Twitter saying “I was disappointed to wake up this morning to see images trash all over Chesapeake Bay beach after Sunday’s festivities. Let’s work together to keep our City beautiful.”
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The amount of trash that was produced on this one beach on this one weekend is more than beaches in other states see in an entire summer. For example, in an article by USA Today, Florida volunteers reported nine tons of trash picked up on Pensacola beaches throughout 2018, less than Virginia produced in one weekend. Hopefully, this serves as a wake-up call to tourists everywhere the importance of ‘leave no trace’. This is a great example of how many small actions from a large group of people can have a larger impact than anticipated, and when it comes to the planet it’s important to be environmentally conscious of what you’re putting into it.
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