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Coastal Stars: Sea Angels’ purpose is greener beach cleanup

Sea Angels founders (l-r) Rod and Kathy Silverio and Robyn and Mike Halasz prepare for a cleanup event at the Boynton Beach Inlet in late January. The group aims to remove litter from the beaches with a ‘minimal carbon footprint and without disturbing the local wildlife,’ according to Mike Halasz. Photo by Kurtis Boggs

THE COASTAL STAR-By Allen Whittemore
February 1, 2012
    “Mike and I have been beach-goers forever, but they just kept getting dirtier and dirtier until we did not want to go anymore,” says Robyn Halasz, Founder of Sea Angels, a project dedicated to environmentally sound beach cleanup projects. 
    In 2005, Robyn and her husband began cleaning up Ocean Inlet Park beaches around the Boynton Inlet, and wanted to do so without using plastic bags, throwaway gloves or anything else that would add to the existing trash problem.
    They also began looking for any existing groups to join, but could not find one that was doing things the way they wanted. In March 2011, they partnered with Kathy and Rod Silverio to create the Sea Angels.
    “Robyn and I had a vision that we could clean the beaches with a minimal carbon footprint and without disturbing the local wildlife,” says Mike Halasz. “We contacted the Solid Waste Authority, who have been very supportive, and added specialized recycling bins to those already at the park.”  
    One is a mono-filament bin for the old fishing line that they constantly find on the beach.  “It is such a problem,” Robyn says. “We find birds caught in it, and it also kills the turtles that eat it. I am so proud to say that people are really using these bins.”
    When filled, these bins are emptied and the line is sent back to the manufacturer Berkley, which recycles it.  
    Another pet project is the cigarette butt recycling program. Mike said, “You would be amazed how fast we can find thousands of cigarette butts. Diseases can also last for days on discarded ones.” Additional bins have been added to accept and recycle these as well.
    “I have also found needles with blood on them, drug vials, car engines, shotgun shells and whole IV systems … it can be really scary what you find,” Robyn said.  
    On the last Saturday of each month, volunteers gather at Ocean Inlet Park for a two-hour cleanup session.  “Volunteers have come from as far away as Australia,” Mike proudly says. “And they are hard core, they see our passion and it gets them motivated. We cover the entire park.”
    Each volunteer has a reusable plastic bucket and a pair of grabbers to do the work.  Everything is sorted and much of it is then driven to the SWA transfer station, all at no cost to the city or county.  
    “We are saving taxpayer dollars and we don’t take any city money,” Robyn says. 
    Their efforts have made a large impact. The town of Ocean Ridge has already presented the Sea Angels with a proclamation appreciating the work that they are doing.  
    The Sea Angels have plans for an upcoming reef cleanup, and would like to see their model used by other municipalities. “My goal is to go national one day and international the next,” Robyn says.  
    Mike adds, “This is a social project, a social experiment.  We hope to provide greater understanding in the community. 
    “We only clean up two beaches in South Florida; imagine the overall problem.”
    For more information, visit www.seaangels.org.              

The beach at Beachway Drive in Ocean Ridge, FL

OCEAN RIDGE — Not content to clean up one beach, the Sea Angels have expanded.The group formed in late 2010 to police Ocean Inlet Park, the Palm Beach County park at the mouth of the Boynton Inlet. Its next cleanup is set for 8-10:30 a.m. Saturday.  And on Dec. 19, it conducted its first cleanup at the Beachway Drive public beach access in Ocean Ridge. Beachway Drive is an extension of Woolbright Road.

The next Beachway Drive cleanup will be sometime in January, Michael Halasz, who founded Sea Angels with his wife Robyn, said today.  Because parking is limited at the Beachway site, Sea Angels coordinators ask people who want to volunteer for that location to contact them at info@seaangels.org or visit www.seaangels.org.

Dozens of Sea Angels volunteers police Ocean Inlet Park on the last Saturday of every month.  "The issue with Ocean Inlet is the sheer amount of garbage," Halasz said.  Volunteers have collected as many as 2,500 cigarette butts in 90 minutes. Discarded cigarettes are the most common item, followed by food wrappers and containers, caps and lids, cups, plates, spoons, forks and plastic water bottles.  "We will clean as far north and south as we can," Halasz said. He said volunteers will work the Manalapan side and go as far south as Hammock Park, near Ocean Avenue.

  

THE NEW FACE OF ANTI-LITTER MESSAGE
By Erika Pasantes, Sun Sentinel
October 27, 2011

More than 2,000 cigarette butts, used to make jack-o-lantern and ghost mosaics, are scary reminders that littering hurts wildlife. 
Robyn Halasz, founder of beach clean-up group Sea Angels, says these butts make a statement, and are the most littered item volunteers find at Ocean Inlet Park in  Ocean Ridge.  The group meets on the last Saturday of the month to pick up litter.
Sea Angels plans to recycle the cigarettes through an Ohio company that makes them into insulation, adhesives and other items.

Sea Angels receive a Proclamation

Sea Angels cleanup group tackles Ocean Inlet Park

Barbara Ryan (center, of Boynton Beach) and her son Michael (left, age 10) pick up litter with other Sea Angels volunteers on the beach near Ocean Inlet Park Saturday morning. "My daughter Rachel is doing this for community service hours at school," she said. "The beach is teeming with orange buckets and grabbers."Bruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post

By PAT BEALL-Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

OCEAN RIDGE — It's hot, hard work plucking discarded smokes from the sand."It's like a big ashtray," said Lyn Davis, a volunteer for Sea Angels, a newly formed beach trash pick-up group that descended on Ocean Inlet Park Saturday for a day-long clean-up.

The crew of about 32 covered two miles of shoreline. "In the first hour, we collected 1,200 cigarette butts," said Robyn Halasz, who with her husband Mike founded Sea Angels.

That's par for the course. The most common item left behind by beach-goers is discarded cigarettes, followed by food wrappers and containers, caps and lids, cups, plates, spoons, forks and the ever-present plastic water bottles.  There's no shortage of local rubbish, even on beaches such as Ocean Inlet Park, which at first blush looks pristine. It's the beach that Sea Angels have focused on, and, says, Mike Halasz, "In the third month of cleaning, we recycled 210 pounds" of garbage.

Sea Angels has adopted its own green policy. It doesn't hand out water bottles to volunteers. It uses bright orange reusable buckets to pick up garbage, not trash bags. And the few bags it does use are recyclable.

It's a policy that helped attract such clean-up veterans as Bit Shaw."I've been cleaning beaches all my life," said the Tennessee native turned Boynton Beach resident. It's not always beach go-ers who leave trash behind, she pointed out. "Sometimes it comes off the back of boats" and washes ashore.How else to explain the car engine that Mike Halasz once found on a beach? That's not the oddest item he's come across. "The most mysterious was shotgun shells," said Halasz. "You name it, we've pretty much found it."

Bruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post Michael Halasz of Boynton Beach founded Sea Angels with his wife Robyn (not pictured). Sea Angels is dedicated to cleaning litter that threatens wildlife and the environment from local beaches, waters, and parks. Halasz emphasized that Sea Angels uses sustainable methods. "Most people put garbage into garbage bags that just wind up in landfills," he said. "That is really just exacerbating an issue. We use buckets to do all the collection of trash. We use grabbers instead of handing out rubber gloves. We segment all the materials and recycle them. Even the bags are corn based and recyclable. We try to educate as we go along." Bruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post Litter collected by Sea Angels volunteers fills a bin at Ocean Inlet Park Saturday morning.

Bruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post Jamesly Cadec of Boynton Beach picks up litter with other Sea Angels volunteers on the beach near Ocean Inlet Park Saturday morning, July 30. "We're doing it with Karma Club from Delray Youth Vocational Center School," he said. Bruce R. Bennett/Palm Beach Post Ken Rybat (center, of Boynton Beach) picks up litter with other Sea Angels volunteers on the beach near Ocean Inlet Park Saturday morning. "I've done it for four months," he said. "It gets me out of bed on Saturday. It is important. I'm doing it for the sea life. It is very detrimental to them. That's the biggie for me."