How a dead bear led to a world-wide beach cleanup campaign

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Whether you’re one of the 7,000 or so people who will enjoy the sense of self-satisfaction that comes from having helped with the annual Oregon Beach Cleanup, or are among the tens of thousands of people who will enjoy cleaner beaches this summer, you owe a tip of the hat to Judie Hansen of Eugene.

For Hansen — whose last name was Neilson at the time — is the mother of the beach cleanup. In 1984, she organized the first volunteer beach cleanup in the nation.

Quite a seed to plant, given that the organized beach cleanup movement not only expanded to cover the nation, but the world as well. This year, volunteers will gather trash along beaches in more than 100 countries.

It all started at Hansen’s desk at Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife headquarters in Portland, where she worked as executive secretary to the director.

Hansen was thumbing through an Alaska Fish & Game Department magazine delivered to her desk by mistake when she noticed a story about a brown bear that had died after ingesting 13 styrofoam cups. The bear felt “full” but starved to death, biologists concluded.

A birder, Hansen already was aware of the injuries and death suffered by wildlife that became entangled in mono-filament fishing line and plastic six-pack rings.

To call attention to the proliferation of plastic debris in the environment and the problems that debris caused, she eventually came up with the idea of a beach cleanup that would demonstrate what was out there.

With Hansen orchestrating and managing the effort, the world’s first statewide volunteer beach cleanup was held Oct. 13, 1984 under the title “Plague of Plastics.”

Their number swelled by news accounts of the event, 2,100 volunteers collected an estimated 26.3 tons of debris in three hours. Local garbage haulers on the coast hauled the collected debris to landfills.

The first cleanup was “such an immediate hit that other coastal states ... copied the model and within a few years all of the coastal United States and many foreign nations were drawn into the efforts,” wrote Bill Monroe of The Oregonian, who covered the first beach cleanup for that newspaper.

Hansen was invited to give a presentation to scientists attending the First International Conference on the Fate and Impact of Marine Debris in Honolulu.

She received a standing ovation, and invitations to organize statewide beach cleanups for Washington, Oregon, California and the New England States in 1985.

Later, she wrote a “how-to” booklet on organizing such events.

The Oregon Beach Cleanup was eventually adopted by a nonprofit organization, Stop Oregon Litter and Vandalism, which Hansen had gone to for help in recruiting volunteers for the first event. SOLV began the practice of holding two beach cleanups a year, in spring and fall, in conjunction with ODFW and Oregon State Parks.
It branched out into also restoring riverbanks and eliminating illegal dump sites.

In fact, SOLV is so closely associated with the beach cleanup in Oregon that many people believe the organization started the movement. Even Monroe’s own newspaper made that mistake in a recent editorial lauding Jack McGowan, who is retiring as SOLV’s director.

Hansen actually coordinated the cleanup through 1989, when she moved to Indiana to marry Ed Hansen, the director of that state’s fish and wildlife agency. They had met while attending a fish and wildlife agency convention. Following his retirement, they moved to Eugene about three years ago.

Last year, more than 10,000 volunteers helped clean the 360 miles of Oregon coastline in the annual Spring Beach Cleanup. Worldwide last year, according to Hansen, “more than a half-million volunteers in 70 countries collected seven million pounds of debris and helped clean 34,560 miles of shoreline.”

To participate in his year’s event, simply show up at one of the 44 check-in sites Saturday at 10 a.m. A map of sites and registration forms are available online at: www.solv.org/programs/spring_beach_cleanup.asp. Or call (800) 333-7658, ext. 302.

You’ll be “making a difference, one piece of debris at a time,” as Hansen put it in a historical essay she wrote for the upcoming 25th anniversary of the first cleanup.

Meanwhile, the mother — now grandmother — of the event downplays her role.

“One person can instigate a miracle,” Hansen wrote, “but it has taken the diligence of thousands of people in the past 24 years to keep the project alive.

“I honor that Alaskan brown bear. If it hadn’t been for him, I might never have had such a wild and crazy idea.”

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