The Problem at Hand

The problem of marine plastics and debris in nature is daunting, global and the wild Maine shore is seriously impacted. Tides, currents, waves, winds and storms steadily deposit trash along every bit of our coastline.  Unlike times when more natural debris collected and harmlessly biodegraded, modern plastics and Styrofoam persist year after year and if or when some eventually does degrade, it transforms into health concerning microplastics.  

The good news is that Mainers, summer residents and vacationers alike tend to care about a clean environment and most do their part to limit debris entering the ocean while collecting and disposing of the incidental trash they see.  The primary source of shore debris in Maine is from accidental and incidental sources not from direct littering.  Floating non-biodegradable materials washing into our bays and harbors eventually come to rest somewhere along the shore, be it here, Canada or the Coast of Europe.

The unfortunate and counter intuitive reality is that the more wild, inaccessible, and protected from development a shoreline is, the more “trashed” it becomes. Beverage bottles, buckets, rope balls, blue styrofoam blocks, bits of busted buoys and a myriad of other non biodegradable items accumulate year after year.  Islands become ringed in mounds of debris that get worse and worse and doen”t get better without human intervention.  

Just as roadside cleanups have become an Earth Day and spring tradition, we in Maine must develop similar traditions and a stewardship commitment to clean our thousands of miles of shoreline and the tons of plastic debris that collect above the intertidal zone.

One water bottle, deflated balloon, broken buoy and piece of rope at a time, Clean Maine Shores is dedicated to cleaning and properly disposing of the unsightly, and environmentally harmful debris building up along our coast.  We are about collaborating and looking for solutions to problems, not casting blame.  We work with local harbor masters, local government and governmental agencies, school groups, conservation groups, property owners, the commercial fleet, businesses and volunteers to bring awareness to the debris problem and to expand efforts to document and clean up the mess.

No one person or grass roots entity can eliminate the enormous and growing trash problem along our Maine shores.  If however, we work together creating a tradition of stewardship and care for our wild coastline, we can indeed move mountains, mountains of marine debris!