DON'T TRASH MISSION BEACH

1714 Toys

picked up from Jan. 2020 to July 2020. We were shut down for a month.

2019 a recording breaking 4010 discarded beach toys were collected and donated. 

 

Breaking the Myth

 

Is NOT OK to leave your beach toys on the beach for others. No one will pick up and reuse your previously used toys. In reality these toys kill marine animals. The cheap brightly colored plastic toys break easily and fish consider them food and eat them. The beaches are strewn with bright colors of hard plastic. 

 

All toys are easily lost in the sand, drifting away in the tide, stomped on, broken up. 

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Most toys are not seen and run over by trucks. 

 

​We pick up thousands of toys on the beach.  Most of those fun and colorful toys all come with plastic packaging comprising 4 items: 1 large plastic net, 2 piece ‘clip’ closure and a paper label. Most of these toy bundles include 5 plastic toys. All of this ends of finding its way onto the beach.

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Because many pieces are small, they are easily lost in the sand. The netting alone can choke and entrap fish. Can you imagine how easily these small plastic pieces could be swallowed by a sea animal? Wonder what those ridges would do a stomach? 

 

So many of these cheap toys come with tiny breakable parts. Worse yet, people will walk right over a brightly colored plastic beach toy in the tide line. They don't pick them up because they assume a child was playing with them and will return. They rarely do. And so the toys become dangerous to marine life.

 

Not So Fun Fact

• Beach toys are found on beaches all over the world

• Beach toys have been found in whale's stomachs. 

• The most beach toys found in Mission Beach in one day: 342 

 

Recycle Facts

 

• Beach Toys are recyclable and can be tossed in San Diego’s Blue Bins.

• Many Toys are easily donated to most charities.

• Toys have been reused in many art pieces. 

 

What you can do

1. Stop buying plastic and disposable beach toys

2. Only bring big and bright colored items to the beach.

3. Action toys, little doll accessories, little dolls, army soldiers are lost on the beach. Leave them home.

4. Use metal kitchen gear instead of plastic digging toys.

5. Pick everything up when you leave the beach.