October 28, 2021: A day that will go down in infamy in the Tampa design center. It was a stormy and treacherous day near the sea, but seven hearty adventurers from the burgeoning Tampa design center braved the elements to clean-up nearly 20 pounds of litter at Upham Beach Park in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Fortunately, the storms dissipated as they approached the shore and our brave group was able to volunteer four full hours. They covered approximately 1 mile of beach, dunes, and park areas.

The most common litter was cigarette butts, but they also picked up plastic bags, cardboard plates, cups, containers, plastic, glass, bottle caps, and string. The oddest thing discovered was an RPM, yes, a raised pavement marker on a rock!? Adding some intrigue to this litter clean-up event, the beachcombers had to classify the types of items collected and weigh their collections before disposing of them as part of the October Ocean Conservancy month around the world!

Needless to say, countless families, children, adults, turtles, tourists, and locals are safer because of the effort our group made. Keep Pinellas Beautiful, the organization we worked through to organize this event, was very thankful for the team’s hard efforts to make the beach, dunes and park, public areas more beautiful, natural, and safe! The volunteers expressed great appreciation for the Community Service Board’s support of this event.