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Local volunteers come together to pick up litter at Hanna Park for International Coastal Cleanup Day

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The father and son made their way out to Hanna Park on Saturday to help pick up trash littering the parks and beaches.

Together they’re joining hundreds of thousands of others around the world as part of this year’s International Coastal Cleanup.

"I’ve been finding egg shells and trash bags and beer bottles, cigarette butts and bottle caps," volunteer Shardae Johnson said.

The volunteers tell Action News Jax that everything they find is recorded on this sheet and that goes back to a national database. Last year more than 500 volunteers from our area collected about 8,500 pounds of trash.

Joanne Mattingly with the Timacuan Parks Foundation told me cleaning up helps save the marine life too because some items they found can be deadly.

"Balloons are a big problem, when people release balloons, when they go up into the atmosphere, they’ll burst and when they come down, they look like jelly fish and some marine animals eat those balloons thinking that they’re jelly fish," Mattingly said.

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It's the reason why a group of cheerleaders from Bartram Trail High School spent the day at the park, getting involved.

They wanted to show everyone that even the younger generation can do their part to help keep the planet greener.

"We’re making a difference by picking it up and throwing it away, so we can help the animals and help our environment," Sage O'Keefe, a cheerleader, said.

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