This past week, the meeting was held in the Anne Bonny room and Anne Bonny herself stopped by to tell some tales for Fines! Jeff Heeder came back as a full time member and it was great to see him again - Welcome Back Jeff! President Karl Bohnstedt announced that the Annual Holiday Party will start with cocktails and light appetizers at The Planters Inn followed by a trolley tour of downtown Savannah. More details about the party will be forthcoming. Once all Rotary business items were discussed, Laura Lane McKinnon introduced our speaker for the day, Karen Gainey with Clean Coast.
Georgia has a lot of beaches which are only reachable by boat due to the beaches being on barrier islands. Clean Coast focuses on doing clean ups on Little Tybee, Ossabaw, Wassaw, and Black Beard as well as some marsh clean ups. Most trash is washed up from the water with the number one item they find being beverage containers. Ocean Conservancy said the top three items found washed up around the world are 1. cigarette butts, 2. plastic beverage containers, and 3. food wrappers. Over 5 trillion pieces of plastic currently litter the ocean.
A question was asked as to how we can stop this from happening. Karen said we need to think globally and act locally. In Savannah, trash on the streets will go down storm drains which then leads to the marsh and the ocean. She also encouraged everyone to not use single use plastic but to instead use a refillable water bottle. To learn more about Clean Coast, please visit www.cleancoast.org