Folly Beach locals and visitors kicked off Earth Month together in true Folly form with Toby the Turtle’s Earth Month Island-Wide Spring Litter Sweep on Sunday, April 2nd! Hosted by the Folly Association of Business (FAB) Litter Committee and the South Carolina Aquarium, 174 volunteers gave their time and effort to help collect litter debris across our island and were rewarded for their hard work, of course.

Out of the 11,554 pieces of debris found and recorded in the South Carolina Litter Journal by 9 stations set up from the Morris Island Lighthouse to the Folly Beach County Park, 70% of it was plastic-based. 39% of this plastic was cigarette butts and 27% was packaging, electronic smoking devices, and more. Even with cigarette disposal sites and garbage cans located up and down Center Street, at beach access points, and more frequently visited locations, smoking debris still ends up being one of the most collected items during litter sweeps. In addition, 33% of the litter was food-related plastics, and 3% were banned plastics. The Folly Beach Chair Company’s Sweep Dragon Initiative joined us again as an important part of our sweep by collecting all the trash bags and large items of debris across the island.

We believe in “work hard, party harder” here on Folly. After walking around for almost 2 hours in the hot sun picking up trash, volunteers got to enjoy a fun exclusive after-party hosted by Taco Boy Folly Beach and discounts at local shops and restaurants including Lunar Light Botanicals, Folly Beach Crab Shack, Sunset Cay Shipstore, The Washout, and Rita’s. Plus, these participants get to celebrate their contribution at Holy City Brewing as a part of the Lowcountry Earth Week celebration on Saturday, April 22nd!

The fun doesn’t stop there! After the sweep and all the festivities, volunteers got to either bring home their very special wristbands, sponsored by Country Salt Apparel, or drop them in a pot of soil at Taco Boy to grow into brand new plants. How does this work? Instead of using plastic wristbands, the FAB Litter Committee provided paper wristbands embedded with seeds that once planted, would grow into local pollinators. The flowers you could grow include Birds Eyes, Snap Dragon, Dwarf Godetia, Sweet Alyssum, Black Eyed Susan, and Catchfly. It’s a litter sweep that just keeps on giving!

We thank our amazing volunteers from the bottom of our hearts for helping us collect all of this litter and for helping Toby #KeepFollyClean. There’s a reason Folly Beach has been referred to as the “cleanest beach in the Charleston area” and that reason is YOU! We couldn’t have done this without you and can’t wait to see how clean we can get our island to be with our next sweep. Save the date; World Ocean Day Litter Sweep on Thursday, June 8th! Learn more on our Litter Committee page here.