Plastic Ocean Project cleans up Pender County

WILMINGTON, NC (WECT) - Pender County got one step closer to being repaired from Hurricane Florence.

Over 20 volunteers took time out of their day Sunday to help pick up trash in the area. They did this, in part, to help prevent any waste from running into the Cape Fear River.

The Plastic Ocean Project is a group that is meant to protect and help clean the ocean of any harmful materials in it. The plastic that they retrieve from the ocean gets turned into oil, both regular and diesel.

UNC Wilmington students play a major role in helping within the area. Some of the plastic that gets picked up is given to their campus chapter and the students use it to create artwork.

“That is a way of expressing the problems of debris in the environment," said Bonnie Monteleone, Executive Director of Plastic Ocean Project.

When a bag of trash is filled, they weigh it, write the total down, and later it gets recorded as data for research in that area.

“I think its really important to put the effort in and make it a bigger effort so this stops happening. It stops going into our waterways and polluting or rivers,” said Carolina McGann, Volunteer Coordinator.

The Plastic Ocean Project has cleaned up multiple areas since the hurricane. While they say they know it won’t fix all of the problems at hand, anybody can help by reducing single-use plastic products.

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