More than four tons of trash was cleaned up from Lake Tahoe and its surroundings after the Fourth of July holiday weekend, according to the League to Save Lake Tahoe Blue, a non-profit that works to preserve the freshwater lake and its surroundings.
More than 400 volunteers, including residents and visitors, collected over 8,500 pounds of cigarette butts, plastic food wrappers, beach toys, beer boxes — and even barbecues — from six popular beach sites, nearby parking lots, and streets around the Tahoe basin over three hours on July 5.
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In a press release, the League said “the trash removed this year is tragically an all-time high on this, the 10th anniversary of Tahoe’s largest litter cleanup event.”
The “Keep Tahoe Red, White & Blue” Beach Cleanup event has been held annually since 2014. This year 14 businesses, organizations and local governments partnered with the League to bring this litter cleanup event to life.
Zephyr Shoals, an unmanaged stretch of beach on Tahoe’s east shore, had the most amount of trash with 6,279 pounds of litter – the equivalent of a ¾ ton pickup truck – strewn across the narrow strip of sand and piled between bushes and trees in the nearby forest. Interestingly, the area was cleaned just before the Fourth of July by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency’s “Tahoe Blue Crew”. The site is far from permanent trash cans, dumpsters or toilets.
Divers from the nonprofit Clean Up The Lake also plucked trash from the below the water at Zephyr Shoals.
The League, which is more commonly referred to as Keep Tahao Blue, also explained that the Lake Tahoe Basin behaves like a giant granite funnel, which is why any trash left behind will move downhill and into the lake’s blue waters.
“This morning, one of Tahoe’s beaches looked like a landfill,” Darcie Goodman Collins, CEO of the League to Save Lake Tahoe said in a statement. “To Keep Tahoe Blue, everyone who enjoys this place must act more like our volunteers and partners by doing their part. It starts with leaving nothing behind and picking up any trash you come across. Unless each of us share in the responsibility for protecting this place, it could be ruined.”
The organizers also used the BEBOT, an electric, beach-cleaning robot that sifts the sand to remove tiny plastic bits and other trash, to clean the sandy area.
