By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/YachatsNews
NEWPORT – More than 200 pounds of microplastics were collected last summer, mostly from the sand on Agate Beach by tourists.
The Rotary Club of Newport launched a program last year that encouraged guests to use less water, less electricity and to pick up microplastics on the beach. So now, inside Guy Faust’s garage sits about 100 pounds of the plastic debris. The pieces are fine, light and multicolored, like confetti.
“We took it upon ourselves to see if we could take summer tourists and turn them into eco-friendly visitors,” Faust told the Newport City Council during its Monday meeting.
The club received $10,000 from the city along with support from a variety of other local organizations and businesses. The money helped pay supervisors who led cleanups and for advertising to increase awareness of the effort, Faust said. Support for the program this year is already in the city’s proposed 2025-26 budget but is pending adoption this spring.
Microplastics are seemingly everywhere, from the tissues of marine animals who ingest the fibers to our own food supply, prompting research and cleanup efforts. While climate anxiety is prevalent, Faust said, giving people something they can do to help is one way to relieve that sense of powerlessness.
There are two ways you can look at the cleanup effort, Faust told the council. You could see it as “a drop in the ocean,” a small effort in an ever-growing problem.
“The other way to view it, that we told our volunteers before they left for the beach – ‘Every single piece of microplastic you remove today will not be floating around our ocean for the next 100 to 1,000 years’,” Faust said.
Volunteers use screens to sift through the sand and collect microplastics along the beach. The debris is light like confetti and 1½ hours work by two volunteers generally yields about three pounds of microplastics, he said. As the effort stretched into the summer, groups began to measure their success less by the pounds of debris collected and more by the distance needed to walk and find microplastics along the shore, according to the report.
Most of the microplastics on Agate Beach are not left by the tide but are driven by the wind onto the sand dunes, Faust said.
The 200 pounds of microplastic collected last year is being stored with the hope of using it for artwork. Faust has found uses for about half of the microplastics collected last summer — some for his personal artwork he named “The wave of the future” and others were given to local artists for mosaics.
Newport councilor CM Hall asked what incentives were in place to encourage participation.
Last summer, participants received credit for Mo’s Clam Chowder. There is also a point system in which volunteers have a chance to win $1,000 during a wrap up celebration, Faust said.
This summer, the effort is scheduled daily from 10 a.m. to noon July 1 through Sept. 7 at Agate Beach. On Saturdays and Sundays there is an incentive program to engage 20 groups made up of 10-30 volunteers. As a reward, each group will be given $100 for their participation, according to the report. Locals are also encouraged to volunteer any day of the week along with visiting tourists.
For more information and to sign up people can go to the Rotary club’s website.
In other business the city council:
- Reallocated $89,000 from the City Hall landscape project to the Agate Beach Park rehabilitation project;
- Accepted $503,613 from the Oregon Department of Emergency Management to help with seismic retrofitting of water pipelines; and
- Approved a $2,500 wage increase for city manager Nina Vetter based on a performance evaluation.
- Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for YachatsNews and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org
Thank you for addressing what goes on at Newport City Council meetings. Please make that a regular feature of YachatsNews. Thank you!