Beach Bucket Brigrade

  • Location
    Selden, New York
  • Status
    Complete
  • Age Level
    Any Age

The Problem

Welcome to the Beach Bucket Brigade! We’re Cayla and Iris, 15 year old twin sisters, nature lovers, avid birders, conservationists, and Long Islanders. We started Beach Bucket Brigade when we were 14, in the spring of 2019, because there's an enormous need for protecting the wildlife that inhabit our beaches. In the past, we’ve organized beach clean-ups, and we wanted to expand on the idea to reach more community members. Our wish for Beach Bucket Brigade has been to involve our beach-going community members in keeping our beaches clean. The emphasis has been on encouraging children to participate in helping the environment and educating the public on the threats litter poses to wildlife. In addition, we also teach people how to reduce their carbon footprints and plastic usage. Ultimately, we would love for town, county, and state beaches to adopt this program.

Our Plan

The main focus of our program is to lend beach-goers reusable buckets that they will fill with litter found throughout their day at the beach. When participants return their filled buckets to us, as a thank you, they will be rewarded with raffle tickets for eco-friendly products to help the planet. Beach-goes can earn raffle tickets by filling buckets with the litter and doing some fun activities to go along with that. The more bucketfuls, the more raffle tickets! Along with the borrow-able buckets, participants may receive a booklet designed by us, that encourages environmentally friendly practices.

Themes Addressed

  • term icon
    Clean Water
  • term icon
    Community Enhancement
  • term icon
    Pollution
  • term icon
    Wildlife

The Benefit

  • term icon
    People
  • term icon
    Animals
  • term icon
    Environment

Here is how the project went:

Since July 2019, we have conducted 7 beach clean-ups and we are proud to share that with the help of several hundred volunteers, 23,554 pieces of litter have been removed from our beaches with the help of over 300 volunteers. The community's enthusiasm has been amazing and we feel we've made a big impact on not only cleaning up the beaches, but also on helping people make better choices to help the environment. We truly appreciate the time, encouragement, and support our local government officials, NY State Parks, and Audubon NY have given us.

Through this project I/we learned:

We've learned a bunch of great things as a result of creating Beach Bucket Brigade. For example, we've learned how to reach out to others, such as our local council people, businesses, and community members for support. We've also had to develop organizational skills, marketing techniques, and research skills.

What I/we might change:

We are looking forward to continuing Beach Bucket Brigade events. We'd like to expand the clean-ups to more beaches and continue to encourage eco-friendly choices with the ever growing list of healthier choices and habits we can introduce the public to.

My/our favorite part of this project was:

Our favorite part has been sharing our love of wildlife and the environment and teaching children all about how they can make a difference. We feel we've created special memories for them that will impact their choices for a lifetime.

Some tips, tricks or fun facts about the project:

Social media is a great way to reach out to people. Besides sharing info about our events, we learned it's important to keep the page current even in "off season" so that we can encourage people to help the planet all year long. We were also honored to be asked to write an article for Audubon's website as a result of Beach Bucket Brigade and have had some great press coverage. Please feel free to Google us!

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