Community Environment

Volunteers clean up post-Fourth of July trash on Purdy Spit

Even before the clock struck 10 o’clock on the morning of July 5 — the official start of a South Sound Surfrider Foundation post-Fourth of July clean-up event — volunteers were already combing the Purdy Sandspit.

Setting off fireworks on the spit was banned starting this year, and a sign saying so was (and remains) posted at the entrance to the spit. But that didn’t stop the previous night’s revelers, who left behind all manner of fireworks debris and litter on the beach.

So underneath temperate grey skies, people — some from as far away as Redmond — banded together to clean the rocky beach. Trash they collected ranged from tiny pieces of dye-laden paper stuck to rocks and slender pieces of plastic wound into seaweed, to crumpled beer cans, large brown bottles, and empty food bags. 

Two volunteers — Leslie, left, from Lakewood, her son, from University Place — help clean the Purdy Spit. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick

High tide

Volunteers also collected trash from earlier beach-goers who had not cleaned up after themselves, and from what Stena Troyer, Harbor WildWatch’s science director, said was due to the tendency of the wind to blow trash onto this particular beach.

Troyer has organized and led the clean-up effort for the last several years. At the beginning of the event, she guessed there would be less trash than last year — perhaps because of the signs telling people fireworks are illegal, but more likely because of last night’s “really high tide.”

“The logistics of actually being at this beach were impossible, unless you were floating,” Troyer said.

Curtiss Hall weighs a very heavy bucket of trash and debris. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick

Dock debris

Still more trash is from old, decrepit water docks filled with styrofoam-like material, Harbor WildWatch volunteer Kathy Hall explained as she helped her husband, Curtiss, count and weigh the day’s litter haul. A little after 11 a.m., Hall had already recorded 120 pieces of styrofoam-like material.

As an old dock crumbles, the material becomes exposed and crumbles, Hall said. Because of sea level rise, Hall said, people can find “stashes” of this material further and further towards land.

Various pieces of litter — most from people setting off fireworks the night before, but some from previous Purdy Spit visitors — sit on a tarp, awaiting categorization and weighing. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick

Hall recalled a recent visit she and Troyer took to Chambers Bay. She said they were “literally scooping up buckets of those individual pellets.”

Eighty-six volunteers participated in the clean-up, removing 581 pounds of trash. In 2024, 58 people picked up 221 pounds.