Eight teenagers from Madison, Stockbridge and Canastota traveled to the beach Saturday, Oct. 8, not to swim or hang out, but to clean up the beach, focusing on the most littered item in the world, cigarette butts, with roughly 4.5 trillion being tossed each year.
The teens did the clean up to help reduce this impact, but they did it even more to show elected officials that Sylvan Beach needs to be tobacco-free.
Hailey Bernet, a seventh-grader at Stockbridge Valley Central whose family owns a camp on Sylvan Beach, said “I wish the beach was smoke-free, so that kids don’t pick up cigarette butts to decorate a sand castle, and so kids don’t end up smoking later in life, turning a family beach trip into a disaster.”
The group of teens collected over 300 cigarette butts from 19th Avenue to 22nd Avenue. They put the butts they collected in clear plastic piggy banks to give to the Village of Sylvan Beach. Kat Wojsiat a freshman at Holy Cross Academy said “We didn’t want to leave the cigarette litter there, and we didn’t want to throw it in the trash. The filters are not biodegradable, so we decided to share our findings with those who can improve this beach. We hope to have an opportunity to talk with them soon about what they can do.”
“It felt good at first to be cleaning up the beach and helping out a community, but after a while, we just were overwhelmed by the amount of tobacco litter. We hope that the little that we did made a difference, but we know a tobacco-free beach would be the best solution for the health and safety of families that visit this beach,” said Riley Hysell an eighth grader from Madison Central School.
If you want to help make Sylvan Beach Tobacco-Free contact Reality Check at realitycheckcny@gmail.com.