DELRAY BEACH — About 130 volunteers showed up at Sandoway House Saturday morning to take part in the annual Great American Beach Clean-up. The event is part of Earth Day.

Armed with pickers, latex gloves and plastic bags, their job was to comb for anything that doesn’t belong on a beach: bits of paper and plastic and metal and of course cigarette butts. Lots of cigarette butts. Altogether, the volunteers were expected to rid Delray’s beach of about a thousand pounds of trash.

“We get a lot of small stuff, but it does get heavy,” said Nikki Scales, executive director of Sandoway House and organizer of the annual event.

Participants included families, high school kids, Brownie troops and community service groups from throughout Palm Beach and Broward counties.

The reward for their work: a visor, some free snacks and drinks — and a clean beach.

Later in the morning, Palm Beach County Reef Rescue, Shark Savers, Palm Beach County Department of Environmental Services and the city of Delray Beach gave talks and demonstrations on a variety of topics, including sea turtle conservation and recent moves to stop piping sewage into the reef.

Live entertainment, games and crafts — literally making litter bugs out of some the trash picked up earlier — were also part of the day.

 

Tamara Clinton, a Delray Beach resident, stops to chat with a beach goer. Clinton was among the first to complete her work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Min Ho Oh, left, and Mark Kim of North Broward work the dunes above the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathon Banne, left, and Cameron Buford use pickers Sandoway provided as they patrol the shore. Both are Lake Worth residents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marilyn Tofsted and Susan Desch, regular volunteers a Sandoway, hand out snacks to those returning from the beach.