Beach Cleanup with Free Plastic

Surfside Salve | Beach Cleanup with Free Plastic
Project by Kelly Hitzing
Presented in partnership with the Town of Surfside and Free Plastic

Join Free Plastic for a community beach cleanup during Baynanza!

Baynanza is a celebration of Biscayne Bay and its significance as one of the most important ecological systems in South Florida. Traditionally celebrated throughout March and April, Baynanza culminates with the Biscayne Bay Cleanup Day, where thousands of volunteers join together to help clean up our bay’s shoreline. Since Baynanza's beginning in 1982, volunteers have helped remove over one million pounds of trash from Biscayne Bay.

Plastic Poetry combines a virtual workshop about recycling plastic with a poetry workshop from O, Miami, as well as a beach cleanup where the collected plastic pollution will be recycled into 5-inch tall letters to create plastic poems to be installed on the facades of the Miami-Dade County buildings.

Surfside Salve is a series of community writing workshops that provides residents with a creative tool for processing loss and expressing hope. The all-ages, multicultural, trauma-informed workshops are hosted at the Surfside Community Center by O, Miami and an art therapist. Selected poems are then created out of recycled plastics then installed on-site for residents and visitors to feel comfort and hope as they encounter poetry in their daily lives.

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