{"id":352170,"date":"2021-09-23T06:06:37","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T20:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=352170"},"modified":"2021-09-23T06:06:37","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T20:06:37","slug":"icc-2021-community-unites-to-clean-nmi-coasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/icc-2021-community-unites-to-clean-nmi-coasts\/","title":{"rendered":"ICC 2021: Community unites to clean NMI coasts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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E-Land Group employees picked up trash along the shores of Paupau and Pakpak last Saturday during the International Coastal Cleanup celebration. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The environmental movement is truly growing in the CNMI, with over a thousand volunteers joining this year\u2019s International Coastal Cleanup celebration. We had over 1,500 volunteers\u2014893 on Saipan, 532 on Rota, and 149 on Tinian\u2014clearing up over 6,000 lbs of trash in 82 different locations all over the islands.<\/p>\n

This is a big jump from last year\u2019s number of volunteers, where collectively on all three islands, 971 participated in the world\u2019s largest coastal cleanup event.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in the CNMI, everywhere is considered a coastal area, whether it’s the sandy beaches of Micro Beach or the highest peak of Mt. Tapochau\u2014which means every single piece of litter may eventually end up in our ocean,\u201d ICC coordinator Colleen Flores said, in an interview with Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n

Through ICCs, and fighting ocean pollution firsthand, Flores added, thousands of pounds of trash are eliminated and prevented from harming the environment. Volunteers get to be citizen scientists for the day as they assist in collecting data on the types and volume of trash collected, through a universal form that they need to fill up as they pick up trash. In the CNMI, these forms are collected and processed by the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality\u2019s Division of Coastal Resources Management\u2014and the resulting data is sent to Ocean Conservancy, the international organizer of the cleanup event, to be used to help find solutions to the world\u2019s ocean pollution problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a coastal community, we experience firsthand the effects of marine debris and climate change,\u201d Flores said. \u201cUnwanted plastic pieces from elsewhere in the world find their way onto our shores\u2014as we can see in the western beaches on Saipan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ICC coordinator also explained that plastic\u2014its production, transportation, and disposal\u2014contributes to the amount of greenhouse gases in our environment, which, in turn, causes climate change. As plastics break down into even smaller pieces, more greenhouse gases get released into our atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must keep our environment clean in order to maintain the safety of our community, our public health, and our future generations. Every little bit matters. If we make a small change individually, we will make a massive difference collectively.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The environmental movement is truly growing in the CNMI, with over a thousand volunteers joining…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":352172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[7945,257],"class_list":["post-352170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","tag-icc","tag-nmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}