SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Mayor Barry Patel was cleaning the beach wearing his litter patrol shirt at the 30th annual Adopt-A-Beach Spring Cleanup.
Patel was one of the 2,001 volunteers from the Rio Grande Valley who spent Saturday morning picking up trash along the beaches of South Padre Island.
“There were a lot of kids here from Edinburg all the way down to Port Isabel,” Patel said.
The Texas General Land Office reported the Island had the most volunteers in the statewide all-volunteer effort to remove trash from Texas’ shores.
Cameron County collected 18,000 pounds of trash.
“It was great to be here with folks from Cameron County and the entire Rio Grande Valley cleaning up the beach,” Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush said.
More than 6,700 volunteers picked up 110,000 pounds of trash from 151 miles of Texas coastline during the stat event.
Cigarette butts, beer cans and plastic bags are among the most common items found.
But with each cleanup, plenty of odd items inevitably are reported.
On Saturday, the list of weird stuff found on Texas beaches included tents, a car bumper, dog house, hand cuffs and doll parts, to name a few.
Since 1986, more than 496,000 Adopt-A-Beach volunteers have cleaned more than 9,200 tons of trash from Texas beaches.
“This was an all volunteer effort,” said Renee Tuggle, Adopt-A-Beach coordinator. “It’s a wonderful thing because otherwise the local governments would have to spend so much money cleaning up their beaches.”
