Cleanup Nets More Than 200 Pounds Of Trash

More than 40 people gathered at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center on a late April afternoon to share a trashy experience.

For more than an hour the group scattered throughout the Gumbo Limbo hammock and the Intracoastal Waterway collecting as much trash as they could find.

“I love it,” Alan Peterman said. “As you can see, I really care about nature and I'm retired. Between this park and Rutherford Park, it's spiritual. For these people to take care of it and show consideration, I wish it would rub off on a lot more people.”

Peterson, who was about to turn 77 at the time of the clean-up, did his trash collecting on land. Some 30 attendees did their part while kayaking on the Intracoastal.

Brenda Senn and 14-year-old son Bradley utilized a tandem kayak to collect their booty.

“It was good,” Brenda said. “I wish we had more time. We came across a couple areas where there was just an unbelievable amount of trash. If we had more time we could have gotten more.”

The City of Boca Raton's Office of Sustainability co-sponsored the clean-up. Prizes provided by 4Ocean were awarded for finds like the weirdest item found – a wooden tiki head – shoes (flip flops counted), and the oldest collector. Peterman claimed that prize.

The April clean-up marked the third such event for Gumbo Limbo this year. For the first two, the kayaks launched from Rutherford Park across the Intracoastal. April's event launched from Gumbo Limbo.

The trash collected filled four 55-gallon trash buckets, with the total amount collected weighing 225.5 pounds.

Gumbo Limbo plans to hold its next cleanup during the summer.