Jersey Shore beach season is approaching, and based on last year, it will soon be time to bring the voodoo dolls, whoopie cushions, zip ties and denture powder.
Those were just some of the strange items taken from New Jersey’s beaches last year by volunteers from the Clean Ocean Action environmental group, according to a report the group published.
Nearly 3,700 volunteers collected and disposed of 176,206 items along the state’s 127-mile coastline. Many were ordinary and sadly common, like bottle caps, cigarettes and plastic pieces.
Then there are the peculiar objects: a 50-pound bag of rice; a Baby Yoda doll; a severed Barbie head. And then there was the food fryer. Who even BRINGS a food fryer to the beach, let alone leaves it behind?
Also left at the seaside were boxer shorts; a bra; a bikini; fake eyelashes; fishnet stockings and a jockstrap; along with a pregnancy test, outcome unknown.
Cindy Zipf is executive director of Clean Ocean Action, which has conducted beach clean-ups at the beginning and end of beach season since 1985. They’ve gathered nearly 8.5 million pieces of trash, recycling what can be reprocessed. She described the report as a “guilt list of our region’s worst littering habits.”
“It’s hard to imagine,” she said. “From the peculiar to the amusing to really just plain disgusting, you just can’t make this stuff up.”
Nearly 80% of the overall collection was plastic in some form. Bottle caps and lids made up over 13% of the total collection, followed by food and candy wrappers or bags, miscellaneous plastic pieces, cigarette butts and more than 10,000 plastic straws or beverage stirrers.
But others could only be described as confusing, particularly considering that they were left behind on a public beach.
Consider, for example, the plentiful supply of car parts. These included an automobile gas tank, four car batteries, a bumper, an air compressor and 24 tires.
At least some beachgoers were well-groomed as they littered. Volunteers found an electric razor; a container of body hair remover (for lack of a place to plug in the razor?); denture cleaning powder; scissors; and a full-length mirror.
There was a dustpan, a Philadelphia Eagles banner, two crock pots with lids, and a small refrigerator.
And of course, there was leftover food: six pineapples and a coconut, a fortune cookie, a can of tuna, and a box of Valentine’s candy.
That last one just proves that Jersey Shore beach clean-ups are like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get.
