Big beach cleanup yields lots of little trash

Over 200 students, volunteers and chaperones from Rosemont Ridge Middle School joined up the Newport Chapter of Surfrider Foundation to participate in a beach cleanup and awareness event at South Beach State Park. Armed with gloves and cleanup bags and focused on small pieces of plastics and cigarette butts along the South Jetty road, the students picked up thousands of tiny pieces of plastic and hundreds of cigarette butts. Moved by what they were finding, the students spelled out "No BUTTS" along the beach to send a message of awareness of the common types of litter that end up on our beaches and in our oceans. "I can't believe all the cigarette butts that people just throw on the ground", says one student as she picks up around an area where someone apparently emptied a car ashtray. "There should be some sort of stronger law for people that disregard litter laws like this", she went on to say