Abstract
Underserved communities such as Little Havana and Overtown would greatly benefit from the City of Miami making a purposeful effort to improve the solid waste problem but presently, pollution management and cleanup activities take place largely along our coastlines. This project aims to 1) describe the differences between inland and coastal marine debris based on a comparison of the composition of items and the density of items collected per volunteer and per linear mile of cleanups, and 2) create a survey that will collect data on publicly available trash cans, debris density, and site conditions to inform policy decisions. The dataset for part 1 was taken from the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Trash Information and Data for Education and Solutions (TIDES) citizen science data. The metrics we explored for this assessment were 1) proportions of the fifteen most common items, 2) commonness ranks based on these proportions, and 3) trash yield measurements including items per volunteer, items per distance, weight per distance, and weight per volunteer. Statistical analyses were performed on the trash yield measurements to determine if the differences between inland and coastal regions were significant. Common items found in both areas, such as cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic pieces, and grocery bags, are indicative of actions and behaviors that can be taken to reduce plastic pollution in Miami. The items per volunteer measurement was significantly higher at inland cleanups than at coastal cleanups, but all other trash yield measurements were not significantly different by region. Future work of this kind should be done with organized citizen science cleanups with a clear experimental design and similar outputs as Clean Swell. The survey aims to gather this information in the future while also gathering sentiments of community members on trash in their neighborhoods.