Volunteers celebrate Earth Day with Puget Sound beach cleanups

Since 1984, The Puget Soundkeeper Alliance has completed more than 1,600 patrols of Puget Sound waterways, won legal action against 170 Clean Water Act violators and removed over 145,000 pounds of trash from the water.

Even with such a long list of accomplishments, they too have found it difficult to keep volunteers around.

“It’s really hard,” said Sean Dixon, executive director of the Alliance. “It depends on people who want to come out and get their hands dirty by picking up garbage weekend after weekend, year after year. Because there’s always going to be more garbage to pick up.”

That said, the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance is one of the more active beach cleanup organizations that have worked in the Seattle area, engaging with around 1,000 volunteers total participating in about 100 events per year.

“This year is our 40th anniversary. … We’ve got a lot of people who have grown up going to our cleanups and seeing our name,” Dixon said.