1. Skip the Straw Straws are one of the most commonly found items on beach cleanups and are basically just another waste of plastic. Just tell your waitress/bartender #nostrawplease. If you love to use a straw, get yourself a cool metal reusable version. 2. Go Foam Free Styrofoam is a complete design fail in terms of sustainability. It is a petroleum-based, non-recylable, carcinogenic material that takes 500 years to fully degrade yet begins to fall apart in tiny pieces once it is trashed. Spend a few minutes fishing styrofoam pieces out of a river or sifting them out of the sand at the beach and I guarantee you will go #foamfree. 3. Bring Your Own Did you know that every single piece of plastic ever produced is still in existence? Or that it takes plastic 450 years to decompose? 90% of the trash I remove from the Pearl River watershed is single-use plastic. There are over 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. In the US alone, 2.5 million single-use plastic bottles are used EVERY HOUR. Recycling is not the answer. Most plastic sent to recycling centers is downcycled into other products such as carpet and plastic lumber. Recycling cannot keep up with the amount of virgin plastic produced every day. Plastic containers leach hormone-mimicking chemicals into food and drink, especially when exposed to hot temperatures. Why are we using a non-renewable resource to make a disposable product that is meant for a few minutes of use but that basically last forever? Make the pledge to refuse single-use plastic bottles, bring your own reusable shopping bags, and #skipthestraw. Let's stop sending our precious resources straight to a hole in the ground! 4. Minimize Fertilizers and Pesticides Excess lawn fertilizer runs off into our watershed creating algae blooms that greatly reduce the oxygen availability in our water. 5. Compost 6. Plant a Rain Garden 7. Fish Responsibly Discarded fishing line routinely entangles and kills wildlife, imperils swimmers and gets caught in propellers, damaging outboard motors. Littered bait containers photo-degrade into tiny pieces that attract other toxins in the water and are often eaten by fish. Eating fish that has been dining on plastic particles will cause toxins to pass to you. This spring alone, there were 13,057 pieces of trash removed from the Reservoir Spillway area by 150 different volunteers. This amount of trash on our local waterway has a broad spectrum of impacts: loss of tourism/business revenue, impairment of Jackson's drinking water source, increased crime associated with areas of blight, habitat degradation for 7 federally listed species and the rest of the Pearl River Basin ecosystem including oyster hatcheries downstream, and loss of community pride to name a few. Our community deserves clean fishable, swimmable, drinkable water. 8. Clean Your Watershed Volunteer for the 1st annual Pearl River Clean Sweep, an epic river cleanup happening across 15 Mississippi counties, 2 Louisiana parishes and over 490 miles of beautiful river. Cleanup teams will be deployed along the Pearl River Watershed from its headwaters in Nanih Waiya, Mississippi, downriver through the Ross Barnett Reservoir, along the border of Mississippi and Louisiana, all the way to Pearlington on the Gulf Coast. For more information and to register, visit www.PearlRiverkeeper.com. 9. Get Involved Join the Take2Miss social media campaign by picking up litter in your community. The next time you are out jogging, walking, boating, biking, heading to work or school, just pick up 2 pieces of litter, snap a pic and post it to Instagram or Facebook using #Take2Miss. Clean communities and a clean watershed are everyone's responsibility! 10. Spread the Word
One of the solutions to our community plastic pollution problem is increased recycling infrastructure and bottle deposit legislation. Please write to your Senators about the importance of a clean watershed and ask them to increase recycling opportunities for Mississippi and Louisiana: Mississippi Email Senator Wicker Email Senator Cochran Louisiana Email Senator Kennedy Email Senator Cassidy FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Abby Braman, Pearl Riverkeeper, abbybraman@gmail.com Maia Raposo, Director of Communications & Marketing, Waterkeeper Alliance: mraposo@waterkeeper.org; 212.747.0622 ext. 116 Abby Braman Named Pearl Riverkeeper: Newly Formed Environmental Group to Patrol and Protect the Pearl River Madison, MS (July 13, 2017) – The Waterkeeper Alliance Board of Directors has approved the Pearl Riverkeeper organization. Abby Braman, the newly appointed Pearl Riverkeeper, will work to protect and preserve the Pearl River by combining her firsthand knowledge of the waterway with an unwavering commitment to the rights of the community and to the rule of law. “Waterkeeper Alliance is thrilled to have Abby Braman to be the eyes, ears, and voice for this vital watershed and community,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Every community deserves to have swimmable, drinkable and shable water, and Abby is the right leader to fight for clean water in the region.” The Pearl Riverkeeper will be a full-time advocate for the Pearl River and its tributaries, protecting and restoring water quality through community action and enforcement. Abby Braman stated, “Pearl Riverkeeper’s aim is to provide strong advocacy that will result in an improved quality of life for all citizens whether they rely on it for drinking water or recreation, or whether they simply value the Pearl River's continued well-being.” “Abby will have an incredibly important job,” added Marc Yaggi, Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance. “Waterkeepers defend their communities against anyone who threatens their right to clean water, from law-breaking polluters to irresponsible government of officials. Until our public agencies have the means necessary to protect us from polluters, and the will to enforce the law, there will always be a great need for people like Abby to fight for our right to clean water.” The Pearl River originates in Neshoba County, Mississippi, passes by the state capital, Jackson, along the border of Louisiana, eventually draining to the Mississippi Sound. The river is approximately 490 miles in length and drains an area of 8,760 square miles. The Ross Barnett Reservoir, a 33,000 acre impoundment, provides the drinking water supply for much of Mississippi. The Pearl River Basin is rich in ecological resources including over 40 species of mussel and 130 species of native fish. It supports seven federally listed species including the ringed map turtle, Gulf Sturgeon, inflated heelsplitter mussel, Bald Eagle, dusky gopher frog and Louisiana black bear. The Pearl Riverkeeper will advocate for the health of a watershed that is being threatened in numerous ways. One threat to the Pearl River is a proposed “One Lake” project which would require the dredging of an additional 7 miles of the Pearl to widen, deepen and straighten the waterway for commercial development. Additional threats include point-source solution from the various industries located along the river and from the Jackson sewage treatment plant. Farming runoff and high sediment loads caused by construction and the logging industry further impact water quality on the river. Pearl Riverkeeper will work on watershed-related issues from the headwaters of the Pearl River in Nanih Waiya to the Gulf Coast, including the Yockanookany, Strong and Bogue Chitto tributaries. About Waterkeeper Alliance Waterkeeper Alliance is a global movement uniting over 300 Waterkeeper organizations around the world and focusing citizen advocacy on issues that affect our waterways, from pollution to climate change. Waterkeepers patrol and protect more than 2.4 million square miles of rivers, streams and coastlines in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa. www.waterkeeper.org. |
AuthorPearl Riverkeeper is a licensed member of the Waterkeeper Alliance, the largest and fastest growing nonprofit solely focused on clean water. Archives
September 2023
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