National Clean Beaches Week: How to Help the Ocean From Anywhere

Plastic Free July

Every year from July 1st through 7th, National Clean Beaches Week invites us to look out for the coastlines that make our planet worth protecting. But here is the thing: you do not need to be within driving distance of the shore to make a real difference. Whether you are steps from the Pacific or landlocked in the Mojave, the choices you make today travel through stormwater drains, rivers, and wind all the way to the sea. This Plastic Free July, we want to show you exactly how.

Why Clean Beaches Week Matters

National Clean Beaches Week was founded in 2003 by the Clean Beaches Coalition as a weeklong celebration to honor our coastlines — often called the "Earth Day for beaches." It lands on July 1st through 7th intentionally: the 4th of July is the single most littered beach holiday in America, making the timing both symbolic and urgent.

How We Celebrate Is Polluting Our Waterways

On the Fourth of July alone, 60 million Americans head outside to barbecue, and most of those gatherings rely heavily on single-use plastic plates, cups, utensils, and packaging. The average American already generates 2.1 pounds of plastic waste per person every single day. During holiday weekends, that number climbs. Over a three-day Fourth of July weekend, that adds up to hundreds of millions of pounds of plastic from a single celebration.

And then there are the fireworks. Beyond the spectacle, fireworks leave behind plastic casings, cardboard tubes, chemical residue, and unburned debris that scatter across beaches, parks, and neighborhoods. The heavy metals and oxidizers used to create those brilliant colors including potassium nitrate, sulfur, and perchlorate, wash directly into storm drains and waterways when it rains. Studies have shown measurable spikes in perchlorate levels in drinking water sources following fireworks displays, a chemical that can disrupt thyroid function. What lights up the sky does not disappear. It lands somewhere.

When the celebration is over, only about 5 percent of all that plastic waste will actually be recycled. The rest leaks into landfills, rivers, and waterways or is incinerated, releasing its own toxic load into the air.

The good news is that individual action adds up fast. At the 2024 International Coastal Cleanup alone, over 486,000 volunteers collected more than 7.4 million pounds of trash across the globe. Community cleanups do not just remove debris, they build awareness, change purchasing habits, and create the public pressure that shifts policy.

All Pollution Is Connected: The Land-to-Sea Pipeline

Here is the insight that changes everything for landlocked communities: 80% of ocean plastic starts on land. It travels through street gutters, storm drains, streams, and rivers before reaching the coast. A plastic firework wrapper dropped on a Las Vegas sidewalk can eventually find its way to the Colorado River and, from there, to the Pacific.

This means that every neighborhood in America from the mountains of Colorado to the plains of Nebraska are upstream from the ocean. Protecting the sea is not a coastal activity. It is a daily practice, wherever you live.

What You Can Do — Starting July 5th

1. Make July 5th a Cleanup Day

The morning after the 4th is one of the most littered days of the year. Firework debris, plastic cups, food wrappers, and packaging are scattered across parks, beaches, sidewalks, and neighborhoods everywhere. You do not need an organized event to make a difference — just grab a bag and gloves and spend an hour clearing your nearest green space, riverbank, or street. If you want to join or organize something formal, apps like Ocean Conservancy's Clean Swell let you log your haul and add it to a global dataset so your inland effort counts right alongside coastal cleanups worldwide. Either way, picking up litter on July 5th is one of the highest-impact things you can do in under an hour.

2. Bring Your Reusables to Every Celebration

The single most effective thing you can do at any holiday gathering is come prepared. Pack a set of reusable plates, cups, cutlery, and cloth napkins before you head out. Keep a stash in your car so you are never caught without them at a cookout, picnic, or community event. Saying no to a plastic cup is easy when you already have your own in hand. The goal is not to be the person who lectures everyone at the party — it is to be the person who quietly never needs a single-use item in the first place.

3. Swap Single-Use Plastics for Reusables at Home

The bathroom is the most plastic-saturated room in most homes, yet it is also the easiest to transform. Shampoo bottles, conditioner bottles, body wash dispensers, toothbrush packaging — these add up to billions of units in landfills every year. Switching to a plastic-free shampoo bar, conditioner bar, or zero-waste toothpaste tablets removes that waste at the source, before it ever has a chance to enter the waste stream. We designed our entire personal care line around exactly this idea.

4. Rethink Your Kitchen Plastics

Food packaging is consistently among the top categories of debris found at beach cleanups — wrappers, bags, bottles, and lids. Bring reusable bags to the grocery store, choose products with minimal or compostable packaging, and replace single-use cling wrap with plant-based wax food wraps. Our plant-based wax wraps are 100% vegan and work beautifully for leftovers, produce, and snacks to pack and take on the go or in store in the fridge.

5. Choose Plastic-Free Cleaning Products

Most conventional cleaning products come in single-use plastic bottles that are rarely recyclable due to chemical residue. Switching to a concentrated liquid castile soap, dissolvable sheet, or bar eliminates the bottle entirely and often reduces toxic chemical runoff that enters waterways through drains. Our dish soap bar, castile soap, and toilet cleaning sheets were built for this exact switch.

6. Watch What Goes Down Your Drain

Microplastics — tiny fragments under 5mm — are now found in every ocean on earth, and a significant source is our own washing machines. Synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon shed microfibers with every wash cycle. When possible, choose clothing made from natural fibers like cotton, linen, or wool. You can also add a microfiber filter or washing bag to your laundry routine to capture fibers before they reach the wastewater system.

7. Support Ocean-Focused Organizations

Money moves mountains. Organizations like 5 Gyres, rePurpose Global, and Ocean Conservancy fund research, run cleanups, and lobby for the systemic policy changes that individual action alone cannot achieve. We partner with both 5 Gyres and rePurpose Global because we believe that every purchase should do more than just arrive plastic-free, it should actively fund the work of pulling plastic out of the environment.

8. Use Your Voice as a Consumer and Citizen

Research shows that public demand for government and corporate action on plastic has never been stronger, and it is working. California, Maine, Oregon, and Colorado have all passed extended producer responsibility laws that hold brands accountable for their packaging at end of life. If you believe a company could do better, say so. Tag them. Write to your city council. Vote with your wallet. One study estimated that shifting consumer purchasing patterns can cut plastic waste by up to 29%.

What We Are Doing This Plastic Free July

At Me Mother Earth, every product we make starts with one question: can we do this without a single piece of plastic? Our entire line from our toothpaste tablets to our shampoo bars to our kitchen cleaning products are designed to arrive at your door in reduced and plastic-free packaging, Leaping Bunny certified cruelty-free, and with the end of life taken into account. 

This July, we are celebrating National Clean Beaches Week the same way we celebrate every week: by making it easier for you to eliminate plastic before it starts. Because the best cleanup is the one that never needs to happen.