Event Highlight: ICC 2021

Every year KNHB, along with many other organizations, participates in the International Coastal Cleanup sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas initiative. This event is hosted in over 150 countries around the world, inspired by a community desire for clean coastlines. In 2020, despite many challenges, New Hanover County was able to organize volunteers at multiple locations to collect 400+ lbs of trash and recycling. These collections were documented using a program called Clean Swell, the world’s largest database of marine debris. Using this information, The Ocean Conservancy is able to create the Ocean Trash Index to track marine debris all across the globe. To learn more about Trash Free Seas and the Ocean Trash Index please visit oceanconservancy.org. For more information about Keep New Hanover Beautiful’s ICC event locations please visit our events page!

KNHB Nominated in Global Marine Debris Grant Contest

Keep New Hanover Beautiful has been nominated in the Marine Debris Prevention and Awareness Grant Contest sponsored by The Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN).

The TIRN is a global nonprofit focused on "inspiring and mobilizing people around the world to protect marine biodiversity and the oceans that sustain all life on Earth." This is the second grant opportunity the organization has sponsored during the Covid-19 pandemic to support conservation efforts.

This grant contest features organizations from across the globe supporting efforts to clean our oceans and waterways. Keep New Hanover Beautiful was nominated for our new Seabin Project, created to remove and research debris from the Cape Fear River and Intracoastal Waterway. More information on our project can be found on our webpage.

The Seabin Project is an Australian company developing upstream solutions to solve marine debris at the source. We are happy to be partnering with them, as well as Keep America Beautiful to implement this project in our community.

Voting begins today for the Turtle Island Restoration Network contest! Click here to learn more about contestants and cast your vote! Voting is limited to once per day.

Every vote gets KNHB one step closer to expanding our Seabin program and cleaning up our community. Thank you for your continued support.

- The Keep New Hanover Beautiful Team

Special thanks to our volunteers for helping us clean 100lbs of marine debris out of the Cape Fear!

Keep New Hanover Beautiful's newest initiative with The Seabin Project is off to a great start with over 100lbs of debris collected. We are also proud to announce our newest partnership with the University of North Carolina Wilmington Aquatic Ecology Lab to research further collections and their impacts on our ecosystem.

For more on this project and commentary from our Executive Director, check out this article from Port City Daily!