Living just a short distance from the Mediterranean coast, beach cleanups have become a meaningful and familiar practice for our community. Over the years, we’ve often partnered with Plastic Free Israel, inviting the public to join while our students took on roles as educators—leading trivia games, sharing information, and conducting waste surveys to better understand what ends up on our beaches.
This time, we kept it simple. On a Friday morning, a group of 12 EMIS students and 3 staff headed out to clean the beach near Port Tel Aviv, where the Yarkon River meets the Mediterranean Sea. With minimal planning but plenty of motivation, we collected 113 kg of trash—from microplastics and bottle caps to soccer balls and construction waste. This area suffers from pollution and waste build-up after winter storms. This time, the water level was very high due to the high volume of rain in the recent weeks. It makes it a bit harder to clean because more of the beach is covered, but it also makes it more important: so much waste has arrived from upstream and should be stopped from getting to sea.
We go out to cleanup public areas for two main reasons: to take direct responsibility for the ecosystems we depend on, and to show that taking action doesn’t have to be complicated. Being present and caring for shared spaces (no matter whose job it is) is a powerful way to educate, raise awareness, and remind ourselves that meaningful change often starts with simple steps.
