Tybee Clean Beach Volunteers is made up of a network of like-minded people that take direct action to remove trash and debris from Tybee’s beaches. Every week we band together and ‘deep clean’ a stretch of beach, usually for an hour or so and covering from one to two beach entrances (city blocks) at a time.

We rotate our cleanings around the island, targeting problematic areas most often, but also not neglecting the less populated areas. Our hope is that, over time, the number of volunteers and city employees cleaning up the beach will vastly exceed those that carelessly leave their trash behind.

What makes our beach cleanings different from the typical beach sweep? We don’t use plastic bags or produce any trash in the collection process; our volunteers get out on the beach weekly to conduct intensive cleanings in small teams, vs. several times a year in large groups; we sort, count, and track every item so we know factually what has been recovered and where it came from. This helps us – and the City – to target problem areas. We also recycle most of what we recover, either through municipal recycling or, for hard to recycle items such as cigarettes, straws, bottle caps, bits of broken plastic, and snack wrappers, with our partner Terracycle.

We’re proud to say that our beach trash has been in the newspaper and on TV, has attended City Council meetings and public anti-litter workshops, and has become the raw material for several trash-to-art projects!

We hope you come join us and see firsthand how rewarding an experience it can be to remove materials that are hazardous to all marine life and are an unsightly blemish on an otherwise perfect beach.

Please check us out on Instagram and on Facebook. 

See you on the beach!