Proud doesn’t even describe how I feel about our community in Rincon, PR. On February 9th, we made Domes Beach a cleaner place. With over 64 volunteers, we collected more than 65 bags of trash, including micro-plastics and larger items, such as couches, tires, and air conditioning units.

We began our morning with yoga led by Cait Lawson. This was a great way to start the day by stretching our limbs out prior to putting in a lot of hard labor.

At 8:30 am, we began the cleanup with so many volunteers ready to help. Some of our volunteers even brought their own buckets and gloves to reduce their footprint. This beach cleanup differed from our last cleanup, in Anasco, because we dealt with smaller pieces of trash, also known as micro-plastics. Some commonly found micro-plastics included broken pieces of egg cartons, bottle caps, straws, six pack o-rings, plastic silverware, and Styrofoam.

Some facts about the cleanup:

64 volunteers
Over 65 bags of trash collected
- 30 bags of recyclables
- 35 bags of trash
Larger items collected: a couch, part of an air-conditioning unit, 3 tires, a boat trailer hitch, a plastic bin, and fish nets
Commonly found items: bottle caps, beer cans, gallon water bottles, water bottles, straws, Styrofoam, and micro-plastics

Micro-plastics are smaller pieces of plastics that have been broken down over time into smaller fragments. They are not recyclable. Due to how small micro-plastics are, fish and mammals tend to commonly mistake them for food. Their stomach’s become full and they eventually die due to starvation. There are plenty of videos on the internet of this occurrence.