Another busy day for Keep Tahoe Blue.
While some beaches were clean, others were an absolute mess.
The 10th annual Red, White and Blue beach clean-up set out for six beaches to be cleared of trash, and Zephyr Cove was blanketed by garbage.
"It makes me feel devastated, disgusted and hurt," said Justine Palacios, Longtime Lake Tahoe resident.
Keep Tahoe Blue collected 3,450 pounds of trash last year, and this year blew that number out of the water.
In total today, they picked up over 8,500 pounds of litter with 6,279 pounds being gathered at Zephyr Cove alone.
This clean up event set an all-time record as this was the largest mound of litter collected in the event's 10-year history.
"Just to see the kind of trash and filth that can be left by people who recreate here in our community is absolutely devastating," Palacios said.
Palacios has been a long time Lake Tahoe resident; she grew up here and her grandfather founded the M.S. Dixie II in 1971.
She was heartbroken by the mountains of trash they cleaned up.
EZ ups, foldable tables, chairs and cans are just some of the items they picked up from the beach and water.
While the Fourth of July can be fun, leaving behind your trash can do a lot of damage to the lake.
"Unfortunately, a lot of this trash gets left on the shore and makes its way into the lake," said Courtney Thomson, Community Engagement Coordinator, Keep Tahoe Blue. "Unfortunately, plastic never biodegrades it only photo degrades and breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces so it's really important to collect this litter before it reaches the lake."
While people can usually gather all of the big items, Keep Tahoe Blue and ECO-CLEAN Solutions are resorting to robots to get the little stuff.
"What we're doing is we're cleaning up right after the Fourth of July here with the BEBOT," said JT Chevallier, Chief Strategy Officer, ECO-CLEAN Solutions. "The BEBOT is a solar and battery powered beach sifting robot that's remote controlled and can dig down between one and four inches underneath the surface of the sand to pick up things human powered beach cleaning can't do because they can't see it."
This is the second year ECO-CLEAN Solutions is using the beach cleaning robot also known as the BEBOT.
The organization was given funding from Keep Tahoe Blue in 2022 for this robot project.
BEBOT came all the way from France.
The bot is aimed at getting the small microplastics and things such as cigarette buds, band-aids, wrappers and more.
There are two key functions for the machine.
For driving, the bot uses tracks to be able to move in a 360-degrees while limiting the impact it has to the sand.
But how the machine picks the trash is the most important part.
"And then the back part of it which is the sand sifting mechanism attaches and what it does by moving the track forward it pushes sand back over the grater," Chevallier said. "The grater shakes up and down and it takes that material and deposits into a hopper. Then this is when the human power comes back, and we then take that material and sort through it."
One everything is sorted, anything that is natural to the area will be returned.
Today the robot was only able to make it to Kings Beach, but they plan on bringing it to not just beaches, but other recreation areas as well.
While picking up the larger pieces of trash is important, the little pieces can do just as much damage.
"The thing is they perpetuate into the environment and break down in the sun to small pieces and this is really harmful to wildlife and really toxic in this state," said Marilee Movius, Senior Community Engagement Manager, Keep Tahoe Blue. "And so, volunteers getting outside to enjoy the morning together and picking up this litter is really critical."
If you like to help with the upkeep of Tahoe, you can visit Keep Tahoe Blue's website below.
