Residents Pickup Hundreds of Pounds of Litter at Soundview Park on International Coastal Cleanup Day

Posted on 19 September 2022. Tags: , , , , ,

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Around 75 residents of Soundview and neighboring areas volunteered on International Coastal Cleanup Day to help preserve the Bronx River. Mansi Vithlani for The Bronx Ink.

Volunteers removed 47 bags of trash from the Bronx River on Saturday during International Coastal Cleanup Day. The event, which is held yearly on the third weekend of September, was hosted by The Bronx River Alliance.

This is the first time since the pandemic that the coastal cleanup returns to Soundview Park at such a large scale, according to Victoria Toro, a Bronxite and the Community Outreach Coordinator of The Bronx River Alliance. 

“People are giving up their Saturday to clean up garbage, that’s pretty damn cool,” said Christian Murphy, Ecology Coordinator at the Bronx River Alliance.

There are three main pollutants to the river of which floatable trash is one of them, according to the Bronx River Alliance’s research. 

The Bronx Community Board 9 district’s 2023 budget request, of which Soundview is part of, states there is a greater urgency to “maintain and supervise” the local parks and playgrounds. 

Christian Murphy, Ecology Coordinator at the Bronx River Alliance after finding a heavy picnic blanket thrown out as garbage,  in the Bronx River. Mansi Vithlani for The Bronx Ink.

“There’s not a lot of green spaces in the Bronx, and they don’t have as many trees compared to other boroughs in New York City, so whatever we can do to keep these parks healthy and happy is really important to the community,” said Murphy.

Groups of volunteers each concentrated on a specific section of the Bronx River, collecting trash while recording their findings via a tracking sheet, highlighting the type and amount of trash they had collected. 

Ocean Conservancy will use the information gathered from the Soundview event and other worldwide locations to learn more about the types of trash that are entering the environment, developing policies that could have an impact in both the United States and other countries.

Volunteers tracked the amount of items they had collected along the shoreline, with their findings later added to the Ocean Conservancy’s “Clean Swell App”. Mansi Vithlani for the Bronx Ink.

“Volunteers are helping collect important data that is going to inform advocacy, policy and action, not only for non-profit organizations, but also political agencies and governments,” said Toro

The 23-mile Bronx River serves as a gateway to the Atlantic Ocean, where litter that passes through New York Harbor and Long Island Sound could eventually end up.

 “There are so many people in the city, this [event] should be as crowded as a marathon,” said Yonkers resident Cadecia Forgnie.

One volunteer found a large pillow along the Bronx River shoreline. Mansi Vithlani for the Bronx Ink.
Volunteers found various large items such as parts of a dishwasher along the Bronx River shoreline. Mansi Vithlani for the Bronx Ink.

Volunteers most often found wrappers, bottle caps, and plastic bottles along the shoreline. A car engine, half of a dishwasher unit, pacifiers, a fire extinguisher, a kids’ play mat, and a large pillow were among some of the more unusual objects. 

The Bronx River Alliance started the process of cleaning up and rehabilitating the river in 1974, advocating for the equitable restoration of the Bronx River. 

According to their annual report, in 2020 a total of 2500 bags of trash were removed from the river, 1000 native species were planted, and 335K square feet of invasive growth were eliminated. 

Left: Litter found along the Bronx River prior to volunteers cleaning up. Mansi Vithlani for the Bronx Ink.
Right: The same shoreline along the Bronx River after two hours of clean up. Mansi Vithlani for the Bronx Ink.

Volunteer, Oscar Asencio-Ramos, and his wife have been living in Soundview for 38 years and regularly attend events held by The Bronx River Alliance.

“We live in the neighborhood, we use the park and we want to walk through and see a clean park with no garbage all over the place and the waterfront clean.” 

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