Fredonia is hosting its semiannual beach cleanup event on Saturday, Sept. 20 from noon to 2 p.m. The event, which is part of the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup initiative, will take place at Point Gratiot Park in Dunkirk.
The event is free and open to the public. Students who require transportation are asked to meet in the Jewett Hall parking lot and transportation will leave the lot at 11:30 a.m. The rain date for the event is the following Saturday, Sept. 27.
Ocean Conservancy is an organization dedicated to improving the health of the world’s water. International Coastal Cleanup, going into its almost three decades of existence, is an initiative intended to mobilize citizens to actively save the oceans. According to the Ocean Conservancy’s 2014 report, last year’s beach cleanup brought together 648,015 volunteers across 95 countries to pick up over 12.3 million pounds of trash.
Fredonia has been hosting two beach cleanup events each year since 2009 - one in the fall as part of the International Coastal Cleanup and one in the spring as part of Earth Week. To date, Fredonia has orchestrated over 400 volunteers collecting over 3,000 pounds of trash from Dunkirk’s Lake Erie shorelines.
Students who would like to participate are encouraged to contact Sherri A. Mason, the Environmental Sciences program coordinator, at mason@fredonia.edu or at 716-673-3292.
