International Coastal Cleanup Day 2026

On Saturday, September 19, 2026, The International SeaKeepers Society celebrated International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Day with a coastal cleanup at Margaret Pace Park. This year marked the 41st year of ICC, the world’s largest single-day cleanup effort organized globally by Ocean Conservancy. Participation in Miami-Dade County was organized by Volunteercleanup.org, with 74 cleanups occurring across the county. SeaKeepers partnered with Biscayne Neighborhoods Association (BNA) and City of Miami Parks and Recreation, with sponsors Care Resource Community Health Center, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, and District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo, who helped rally volunteers in the nearby community. We were joined by 48 volunteers at the entrance of the park, where they grabbed shirts, buckets, bags, gloves and pickers to prepare them to remove debris from the park and shoreline. After an introduction to BNA and SeaKeepers and a safety briefing, volunteers spread out throughout the park in search of litter, focusing largely on the coastline and mangroves, where trash tends to accumulate from the water. Volunteers quickly began returning with buckets and bags full of trash – mainly aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles, takeout containers and cups, bottle caps, cigarette butts, utensils and straws. A few dedicated volunteers even helped to remove an inflatable kayak that had been abandoned on the shoreline for months and was deteriorating in the water. The hard work of our volunteers resulted in over 192 pounds of trash removed from the park, ensuring the debris wouldn’t enter the shores of Biscayne Bay, where it would surely endanger the local marine life through ingestion or entanglement. We are so grateful to all of our partners and volunteers for making this cleanup a success, and to volunteercleanup.org for organizing local participation, resulting in over 26,000 pounds of trash collected in Miami-Dade County!