TAMPA, Fla. — Nearly 500 volunteers, more than ever before, got up bright and early to help Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful cleanup after Gasparilla.
“This is really great,” Vindri Gajadhar said. “It’s very heartening to see the support.”
Gajadhar brought several of her students with her. She said, “A lot of students wanted to help. I loved seeing that.”
According to Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful, they collected 75,000 lbs of trash and 35,000 strands of beads either on land or in the bay.
Kristina Moreta with Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful said it was a very successful day.
“I just love that everyone was really excited about it,” she said.
Beads and plastic made up the bulk of what they collected, but they also found some electric scooters in the bay.
“It’s a little weird,” Moreta said. “We were wondering why they were ending up in the water. We haven’t found a good reason why,”
Last year, according to Moreta, Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful pulled about 200 electric bikes and scooters from the waterways. So far this year, they’ve found about 16.
If you think plastic is bad, environmental experts said E Scooters and Bikes are just as bad, or worse in some cases.
“It’s the lithium iron batters, the synthetic plastic,” Moreta said. “The batteries can explode.” She said one even exploded when they were pulling them out of the water last year. No one was hurt, but it underscores how serious this situation is.
“They don’t belong in the Bay or any other body of water,” she said.
Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful is planning to do another cleanup event, focusing on e-bikes and scooters, and getting them out of the water.
“We have to protect our water, and the marine life in there,” she said. It’s important to remember to keep our city “clean, green and beautiful.”
