Green in BKLYN recently heard from an awesome group in Philadelpia.  United by Blue (who removes one pound of trash from our world’s oceans and waterways for every item of clothing they sell) will be cleaning up two sites in Brooklyn.  On September 17th, they’ll be removing tons of trash from “Bottle Beach” and Plumb Beach and are seeking lots of hardworking volunteers!  If you can join them, meet at the Ranger Station Parking Lot at 1 Aviation Road in Brooklyn.

Ever think you would see a bottle graveyard? What about a beach that is littered with bottles of every age, shape, whole or fragments, along with toys from yesteryears (many of which are plastic), shoes, bones, toothbrushes, tires and other random discarded items?  While a place like this sounds a bit surreal, it does exist and can be found in the Jamaica Bay Unit of Gateway National Recreational Area.  “Bottle Beach” can be found along Dead Horse Bay at the bottom edge of Brooklyn.

In the 1920s, the watery marshland separating a series of small islands (with the largest being Barren Island) from mainland Brooklyn was filled in to create NY’s first municipal airport—Floyd Bennett Field.  From the 1850s until the last residents of Barren Island were evicted in 1936, Barren Island was home to dozens of factories and rendering plants and received all of the household items from Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx.  The landfill was used until it was capped in the 1930. In the 1950s the cap burst and its contents started to spill into Dead Horse Bay in the 1980s.  Ever since then, more of the beach continues to erode exposing thousands of glass bottles and pieces of trash along its shores.

Bottles, plastics, tires and other pieces of trash pose a risk to our beloved oceans, waterways and the creatures that dwell there.  Register to join UBB & help clean it up!