HOLLYWOOD, FLA. (WSVN) - Local students learned how to make a difference by picking up plastic at a South Florida Beach, in hopes of creating picture perfect beaches and a cleaner future.
“Some things you just think to yourself, I mean, there’s a trashcan right there, or there’s a recycling bin right there. It doesn’t take 50 years to just walk up to that and just do that and throw it away,” said student Kyle LaFrance.
LaFrance and dozens of other students from New River Middle School are on a marine mission as they spent Tuesday morning on Hollywood Beach. They helped collect trash while getting a hands-on lesson about how plastic affects sea creatures.
“It disappoints me because we have to grow up with the plastic and it hurting our environment,” said student Phoebe Dixon.
About 60 students headed to Nova Southeastern University’s Marine Environmental Education Center to clear the coast of trash and learn about its hazardous effects on the environment.
It’s part of a new marine sciences curriculum created by environmental research organization the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation.
“At the end of the day, these are ocean ambassadors of tomorrow, and we as adults have a responsibility to give them the tools, give them the guidance, learn from them as well, so that we can move towards a better tomorrow, now,” said Jessica Harvey, co-chair of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation.
Students rolled up their sleeves and rid the beach of everything from plastic bottle caps and chip bags to cigarette butts.
Once collected, they sorted, analyzed and cataloged the debris, while they learned how to make a cleaner world for the next generation of students.
Bob Powell, founder and CEO of global waste solutions company Brightmark is inspired by the students.
“I think that it’s taken a long time, many generations, for us to get to this point where we realize that there’s plastics in the ocean, the turtles are eating them and there’s micro-plastics, and yet what I see is hope and inspiration in the kids,” said Powell.
Meanwhile, the young environmentalists in the making are excited to be part of the change.
“Future kids, like, we just don’t want them to grow up in a world where a lot of cool things don’t exist anymore, like fish and dolphins and sea turtles,” said LaFrance. “So we want them to grow up in a world where their world is cleaner and better than ours.”
After the students collected the debris they will turn it into treasure by using it to create art.
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