Sep 20, 2008 8:35 pm US/Pacific
Volunteers Clean Up L.A. County's Beaches
LOS ANGELES
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Volunteers pick up thousands of pounds of litter on L.A. County's beaches.
CBS
Thousands of volunteers picked up 181,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from Los Angeles County's beaches on Saturday's annual Coastal Cleanup Day.
Volunteers scoured beaches, parks, alleys, creeks, highways and storm drains from 9 a.m. till noon at 71 sites throughout the county.
There were 12,262 volunteers collecting 179,144 pounds of trash and 2,106 pounds of recyclables collected Saturday was more than twice the 78,000 pounds picked up last year.
Cigarette butts and Styrofoam fragments are the most frequently found items at cleanups. For example, volunteers at Echo Park alone picked up 5,017 cigarette butts that weighed about five pounds.
Cleanup sites included Santa Monica Beach, where scuba dive teams scoured the sea bed for unusual items, and Marina del Rey, where a kayak flotilla picked up ocean-bound debris.
Some of the more unusual items found this year included a home pregnancy test with a negative reading at Venice Beach, a plastic bag filled with chicken parts and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe at Ken Malloy Park, washing machine parts at Malaga Cove, shotgun shells at Zuma beach, and a Redondo Beach
Pier dive team found a submerged Razor scooter.
With 70 percent of the cleanup sites reporting, more than 55,600 volunteers picked up 635,574 pounds of trash plus 106,581 pounds of recyclables, for a total of 742,154 pounds.
The Coastal Commission expects to exceed 900,000 pounds of trash when all the totals are in.
The statewide cleanup has been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as "the largest garbage collection." It is held annually on the third Saturday in September in connection with the International Coastal Cleanup, observed in nearly 70 nations and all 50 states.
The cleanup was timed to get trash off beaches and out of creeks before the start of the rainy season. Fall begins Monday.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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