DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The day after the Fourth of July is the busiest day for beach cleanups along Central Florida’s beaches, with firework debris and trash left behind by those celebrating Independence Day the night before.
Even though fireworks are banned on Volusia County’s beaches, the county’s Beach Safety department said it made over a thousand contacts for firework complaints Sunday night.
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“Our main goal was compliance but there were fireworks that were confiscated and put into place for our evidence,” said Captain Laura Warner.
Some cleanup crews hit the beaches as early as 5 a.m. Monday morning.
“They had a huge trailer of fireworks debris, and they had their ATV’s out as well all in full force,” Warner said of cleanup crews.
That was just the hired workers. Dozens of volunteers also swept the beach, bringing in bins, trash bags, and truckloads of trash.
“They’re going to miss those little pieces like the firecrackers debris that gets kind of caught up in the water line so that’s really where it helps having the public come out,” said Warner.
She estimated over a thousand pounds of trash was collected all along the coast of the county and that’s even with a smaller Fourth of July crowd than normal.
“Obviously, we have the turtles, sea birds, sea life anything like that and they’re going to see all of that trash and they’re going to ingest it and it’s going to cause a problem,” said Warner.