Clean Beach Initiatives
S.W.I.M. hosts a number of initiatives aimed at at keeping our beaches clean. These programs include:
Adopt a Beach
In 2011, SWIM joined the 25-year-old Adopt a Beach program begun by Salem Sound Coastwatch, a nonprofit watershed organization on the North Shore dedicated to protecting and improving the environmental quality of coastal resources, including beaches, rivers, salt marshes, and the coastal waters. Since then, SWIM has rallied residents to the cause with monthly cleaning of individual beaches by teams of Beachkeepers, as well as organizing an Annual Nahant Beaches Cleanup Day in the spring. Recently, SWIM added an annual fall cleanup of Short Beach, in collaboration with the worldwide initiative called COASTSWEEP. The records of debris collected give valuable benchmarks of conditions and trends.
Annual Beaches Cleanup Day
The first annual beaches cleanup day was organized in 2006 by Linda Jenkins, the president of the Women’s Club. This massive effort on the part of the entire community was a great success and was repeated from 2007-2009. After a five-year pause, the newly-formed 01908 group held cleanups in 2013-2014. In 2015, SWIM took over the annual event. Hundreds of residents of all ages flock to our beaches to purge them of trash. These annual events bond our community together and set standards for the preservation of the beauty of Nahant’s beaches.
COASTSWEEP
SWIM has been taking part in COASTSWEEP events for several years. COASTSWEEP is part of the International Coastal Cleanup, organized by Ocean Conservancy in Washington, DC. Their annual event strives to raise awareness and clean beaches all around the world by bringing hundreds of thousands of volunteers to beaches, lakes, and streams worldwide to remove marine debris and collect data to help identify and address the behaviors that cause the debris. The annual cleanup has grown over the years—in 2016, 2,563 volunteers cleaned 164 miles of coastline, river bank, marsh, seafloor, and lakeshore in Massachusetts—collecting more than 13,780 pounds of debris from 107 locations. In total 147,654 items were collected. We are proud to be sponsoring a newly initiated fall cleanup of Short Beach in Nahant.
Clean Beach Initiatives Additional Resources
Other Community Initiatives Include:
- Educating the public about the environment
- Speaking out and taking actions to protect the environment
- Publishing a guide to the rocks of Nahant, now available at the Nahant Public Library
- Participating in regional environmental seminars
- Serving as a first responder to threats to our beautiful environment here in Nahant
- Serving as a resource to the public about environmental issues
