The Brownie and Daisy troops checked in at one of two stations, here with NPS volunteer coordinator, Scott Hill and FODMer Terry Chandler.
“There’s one, there’s one,” they shouted, as the 20 girls from Brownie troop 53149 and Daisy troop 53209 spotted and bagged plastic and metal bottle caps strewn around the picnic grounds of Belle Haven Park. These Stratford Landing Elementary School Girl Scouts volunteered at the Sept. 21 International Coastal Cleanup, sponsored by the Friends of Dyke Marsh and the National Park Service. The troops are earning their "Eco Learner Badge."
On a beautiful sunny morning, 45 adults and 21 youngsters filled bags with debris discarded along the Potomac River and in Belle Haven Park, the Marina and Dyke Marsh, from plastic bottles to cardboard to Styrofoam.
Annette Coats and Emily Noh, from Thomas Jefferson High School’s Environmental Impact Club, encouraged the scouts by explaining how pollution degrades the land, water and air. Addressing climate change, they told the youngsters to expect more severe weather events. “It could get really hot,” Annette said.
On Sept. 7, just north of Saturday’s sites, 40 volunteers collected 37 bags of trash in the Hunting Creek embayment and Jones Point Park in a cleanup sponsored by Porto Vecchio Condominiums and the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust.
Jen Cole, Director of Clean Fairfax, says the most common trash items found in cleanups are cigarette butts and single use plastic items like bottles and food service items. In the past, plastic grocery bags were in the top ten list. She credits Fairfax County’s $.05 bag tax for reducing the use of plastic bags and keeping them out of the environment.
One Way to Help:
Oct. 5, 10 a.m. to 12 noon, Youth Trash Cleanup, at Belle Haven Park. Register at https://mountvernontrail.org/events/
Earlier this month a study found that the world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and it spreads from the oceans to the mountains to the inside of people’s bodies. This quantity could fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, researchers estimated.
Some plastics can take hundreds of years to decompose. In addition to being unsightly, many items cause harm. Most plastics break down into smaller fragments. These microplastics enter the food web and can be ingested by aquatic organisms, fish, birds and other wildlife. Waterfowl, turtles and other animals can get ensnared in plastic six-pack rings.
Styrofoam or polystyrene, used for coolers, cups, trays and carryout “clamshells,” breaks apart into small pieces, some so small they are invisible to humans. Birds and other animals mistake the pieces for food; ingested polystyrene can be fatal.
Small animals are attracted to food morsels inside discarded containers and can get trapped. Some, like lizards, crawl inside for protection and suffocate or starve.
Federal Initiative
Park Service: George Washington Memorial Parkway (GWMP) officials hope to reduce plastic waste by replacing current water fountains with year-round fountains and water bottle-filling stations. With the support of 15 local organizations, GWMP received a $475,000 grant from the National Park Foundation to fund replacements. NPS has installed a new fountain at Alexandria Avenue and a second is coming soon at Theodore Roosevelt Island. “This initiative is particularly important along the Mount Vernon Trail, a popular recreational route with over one million annual visitors,” says Jonathan Molineaux, GWMP Partnership Coordinator.
The Department of Interior last year announced plans for a phaseout of single-use plastics on public lands within the decade, to reduce their procurement, sale and distribution.
“Less than 10 percent of the plastic that has ever been produced has been recycled and recycling rates are not increasing,” the announcement said. “Plastics, including unnecessary and easily substituted single-use plastic products, are devastating fish and wildlife around the world.”
Solutions
“Community cleanups, while always important, are not the solution to mismanaged trash and recycling,” says Cole. “The solutions include policy changes and support for programs that support residents' and businesses' management of their trash and recycling and reducing the amount of single-use plastic getting into (and out of) the hands of people to begin with. We should be working on a bottle deposit program in the Commonwealth because all those things are what are found in cleanups."
Foam cups and takeout containers may be on the way out in Virginia thanks to a new law. According to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, on July 1, 2025, food establishments with 20 or more locations must stop using expanded polystyrene (EPS) containers. By July 1, 2026, remaining food establishments must comply. The ban applies to any food vendors that serve prepared food, including restaurants, cafeterias, food trucks, catering companies and grocery store salad bars.
Clean Virginia Waterways supports litter taxes, recycling refunds (also called “bottle bills”) and extended producer responsibility programs. The latter programs require manufacturers and producers of products to take responsibility for the goods’ end of life. Depending on the law’s coverage, the products could be anything from mattresses to electronics to packaging.
The Mount Vernon area’s Girl Scouts are ready to take it on. As they began their work Saturday, they recited the Girl Scout promise, committing to “make the world a better place.”