Happy Earth Day!

In honor of Earth Day, the MERGE4 team went out into the community to do a beach clean up! We spent an afternoon at the Capitola State Beach in California, picking up discarded items along the coast, doing our part for the environment, and rocking our super comfortable MERGE4 socks.

Our team used the Save Our Shores app to track the trash that we pulled off of the beach. The Save Our Shores app is allowing people to actively participate in self organized beach clean ups during the COVID-19 pandemic. The app gives people instructions on how to be safe when participating in a clean up with tips on how to handle hazardous items, personal health and safety tips as well as pointers on what should and shouldn’t be left behind on the beach.

We had our team members carefully tally their pickups and here are some of the items that we found the most of:

• Plastic Pieces
• 150
• Plastic Food Wrappers
• 21
• Cigarette Butts 
• 26
• Polystyrene Pieces
• 58
• Plastic To-Go Items
• 12
• Paper Pieces
• 300+
• Cardboard
• 7

• Shopping Bags
• 9
• Plastic Bottles
• 8
• Bottle Caps and Rings
• 24
• Polystyrene Foodware
• 9
• Straws and stirrers
• 78
• Toys and beach accessories
• 5

• Glass Bottles
• 4
• Pieces and chunks
• 6

• Aluminum Can
• 6
• Bottle Caps
• 54

• Bandaids
• 3
• Personal Protective Equipment (masks, gloves)
• 20

• Fishing gear (lures, nets, ect.)
• 3
• Clothes, cloth
• 12

In total our team removed 15 pounds of trash in just a couple of hours. Looking at the amount of garbage that was left behind by our fellow humans was astounding, but we’re just glad that all of these discarded materials weren’t left to live the rest of their lives on the beach and didn’t find a way into the ocean where they could have done some serious damage to sea life.

In addition to our beach clean up, some MERGE4 team members in Utah did a trash pick up along the American Fork Canyon. The team there removed two bags of trash from the river bed and surrounding areas. 

Here at MERGE4 we love our Mother Earth and aim to have a planet first approach in business and in life. Our coastlines are so precious and border some of the most unique and diverse ecosystems in the world! Organizing a community clean up with your friends, family, or community members can be a great way to bring people together, have fun, and help our planet in the process.

About Save Our Shores

Save Our Shores is a marine conservation nonprofit dedicated to fostering a thriving Monterey Bay and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary through clean shores, healthy habitats and living waters. Over the last 40 years, Save Our Shores has been responsible for establishing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS), preventing offshore oil drilling along the Central Coast of California, developing the nationally renowned the Dockwalkers clean boating program, banning single-use plastic bags in over 30 jurisdictions, leading various marine conservation beach cleanups along with K-12 educational programs throughout the Monterey Bay area.