With hot weather and kids home from school, a trip to the beach is a great summer day trip to get out of the house. But a beach day isn’t always a “day at the beach” with potential water pollution, plastic waste and other environmental threats.
Here are our tips and tricks for a successful and eco-friendly summer beach day:
Check the water quality to keep your family safe
Due to water pollution, many beaches can become unsafe to swim in, especially after lots of rain. Our most recent Safe for Swimming? report found that, all too often, the water at many of our beaches poses contamination risks that can make swimmers sick. Scientists estimate 57 million instances of people getting sick each year from swimming in polluted U.S. waters. Those illnesses can include nausea, diarrhea, ear infections and rashes.
While not nearly as bad as getting sick, it’s a real bummer to travel all the way to your favorite beach only to find that the water poses health risks. Fortunately, you can check for health advisories and closings before you head off to the beach. To find the latest beach advisories in your state, visit our Safe for Swimming? report, and select your state on the drop-down menu. Scroll past the map and beach chart and you will see a link at the bottom for the most recent beach safety information in your state.
If you forgot to search in advance, local advisories and closures are usually posted on signs at the beach entrances. Heed beach advisories and closures.
Safe for Swimming?
Reduce your beach-day waste
Once you know the beach is safe for you, it’s time to be mindful about your impact on the beach. One easy way to do this is by packing plastic-free snacks and meals.
Here are some packing tips for your trip:
1. Use reusable water bottles
Single-use plastic water bottles are major contributors to the plastic waste in our oceans and environment. They also have been found to contain microplastics that can create potentially serious consequences for our health. Bringing reusable water bottles already full of water and an extra with ice reduces your reliance on single-use plastic for drinking water.
2. Use reusable containers for snacks
Scientists have found plastic fragments in 44% of all seabird species, 43% of all marine mammal species and 100% of sea turtle species. Far too much of that plastic waste is from single-use packaging. Bringing reusable containers with your family’s favorite snacks is a simple decision that can combat a big problem. Or opt for snacks and meals that come in their own natural packaging like bananas, oranges or snap peas.
3. Pack in, pack out
Nobody likes to see litter on the ground, and at the beach anything left behind might end up in the water. It is very important to pack up everything you brought to the beach, including any garbage. Even biodegradable food waste can hurt the environment if not disposed of properly, so a good rule of thumb is to take everything with you when you leave.
Bonus clean beaches activity
Use your beach trip to proactively help protect our planet by spending 10 minutes cleaning up the beach around you. You can pick up plastic and other trash you find by the shore or in the sand. This is a great time to teach your kids the importance of helping the environment. It lets your kids get hands-on experience and lets them make a real difference in the world.
Make your sun and weather protection eco-friendly
Another important thing to be aware of when you are at the beach is the weather. Make sure to check weather reports before going to the beach and pack appropriate equipment. Hats and umbrellas can limit sun exposure and provide shade for anyone who needs it. This is especially important with little children.
Additionally, packing sunblock can help reduce the risk of any negative impacts of the sun, like sunburns. When choosing a sunblock, make sure to look at the labels and do your research to ensure you have a sunblock that will be right for your family and is free of potentially polluting chemicals.
Have fun!
Fond childhood memories of jumping waves, building sandcastles, fishing, boogie-boarding, shooing gulls away from your lunch, or burying someone up to their neck in sand provide connections to nature and our environment. The future of our environment needs our help today, and you can start by enjoying a day at the beach!
Looking for more ways to connect to your environment on your next beach day?
Download our Ocean Appreciation Workbook. It has activities to engage kids in learning about the ocean – including a beach scavenger hunt! Using this activity during or after your trip can round-out your kids’ new knowledge about the world around them.
Authors
John directs Environment America’s efforts to protect our rivers, lakes, streams and drinking water. John’s areas of expertise include lead and other toxic threats to drinking water, factory farms and agribusiness pollution, algal blooms, fracking and the federal Clean Water Act. He previously worked as a staff attorney for Alternatives for Community & Environment and Tobacco Control Resource Center. John lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his family, where he enjoys cooking, running, playing tennis, chess and building sandcastles on the beach.
Emily manages the marketing and public engagement strategy for Environment Illinois’s campaigns, including our campaign to protect the Great Lakes from plastic pollution. Emily lives in Chicago where she enjoys knitting and biking.
