A Record Year for Beach Cleanup Volunteers

The Marco Island Woman’s Club sponsored a beach cleanup on November 8, 2025, starting on South Beach. They were joined by the Marco Island Academy Key Club, the Democratic Women’s Club of Marco, and members of the community. The Marco Island Beach and Coastal Resources Advisory Committee (BACR), as part of its mission, organizes nine beach cleanups a year and solicits sponsors from the community. For the past fifteen years, the Saturday beach cleanups have become a very popular community event with sponsorships from local businesses and clubs, with most of them renewing their sponsorships each year.

It was a very busy Saturday for the Marco community, yet the cleanup brought together over 40 volunteers and collected 105 pounds of trash. At first glance, volunteers remarked, “The beach is looking fairly clean,” but as they looked more closely, they started to fill their buckets with bottle caps, straws, and everything plastic. Sharyn Kampmeyer, a member of the Marco Island Woman’s Club remarked, “I thought it was going pretty good until we got to the Winterberry Beach Boardwalk area, and it was filled with cans and bottles tossed over the boardwalk everywhere. I noticed that the boardwalk did not have a recycling container by the beach (the trash with the yellow top), so obviously, the under bush is the new recycling area. Hopefully, the City will send a cleanup team to regularly check the boardwalk area and not rely on the monthly beach volunteers.”

For 2025, the nine beach cleanups sponsored by BACR had an overwhelming participation with over 400 volunteers and removed over 700 pounds of trash from the beach! A big thank you to the 2025 Beach Cleanup sponsors for answering this important call to action; as participants, they help remove thousands of plastic wrappers, straws, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, cigarette butts, glass bottles, and monofilament fishing line thus saving the lives of birds, sea turtles, dolphins, and manatees, and keep our waterways safer and cleaner. They also help create a positive overall experience for all Marco beachgoers.

BACR committee members bring to the beach the needed essentials for a beach cleanup, such as gloves, buckets, grabbers, collection bags, and instructions on where to go and what materials to pick up. In addition to beach cleanups, committee members also teach the volunteers on why it is crucial to keep beaches clean and how trash is harmful to marine life and the overall ecosystem of our beaches. This information helps everyone understand the impact of their actions. At the end of the cleanup, members of the committee take an informal survey of what was collected, such as straws and glass containers. This will help them in future cleanups and in advocating for better beach environmental policies.

BACR would like to thank all these 2025 beach cleanup sponsors: Marco Island Academy Key Club, Coastal Breeze News, Ace Painting, Get CAT Fit, Marco Island Sportfishing Club, America’s Boating Club, Democratic Women’s Club of Marco, Marco Island Chamber of Commerce, Marco Island Area Association of Realtors, Marco Island Watersports, ITrip of Marco, Marco Island Civic Association, Our Daily Breach Food Pantry, Al’s Pals and Marco Island Woman’s Club.