Oregon Programs

Our Chapters hold regular beach cleanups along the Oregon Coast, from Astoria to Port Orford, as well as street and highway cleanups in Portland and Newport. Volunteers collect data on the types of trash they find and leverage those data towards policy solutions aimed at stopping plastic pollution at its source. To see the collective efforts of Surfrider cleanups across the country, check out our Beach Cleanup Database below. 

The most common items we find on our beach cleanups (besides butts, of course) are single-use food packaging - cups, straws, clamshells, bottles, etc. Through our Ocean Friendly Restaurants Program, chapters work directly with local restaurants to support efforts to reduce the use of plastic packaging, stopping pollution at its source and protecting our ocean one meal at a time. 

Year after year, cleanups across the world continue to identify cigarette butts as the #1 most littered item on earth. Unfortunately, these butts are made of plastic, and that plastic is full of all sorts of toxic chemicals that harm wildlife and pollute our waters. Some chapters have a HOTYB Program dedicated to keeping butts out of our waterways.  For example, the Portland Chapter holds regular butt pickups, which prevents them from being washed in the Willamette river, and eventually into the ocean.