South Carolina Adopt-A-Beach

South Carolina Adopt-A-Beach Program

The Adopt-a-Beach Program is part of SCDES’s Marine Debris Initiative and is a great….Adopt-A-Beach partners participate in beach cleanups, remove debris from our beaches and coastal waterways, and provide marine debris collection data to SCDES. To learn more about marine debris, visit SCDES’s Marine Debris page.

You Can Participate

You can participate in the Adopt-A-Beach program as part of a group or as an individual.

To participate in recurring cleanups as part of a group:

Register for a MyCoast account
Log in to MyCoast and create a beach cleanup group
Adopt a beach of your choosing
Download the MyCoast app on any smartphones which will be taken to the beach (available for iOS and Android devices)
Pick a day that is convenient for your group to clean your beach
On cleanup day, just open the app and begin recording. Don’t worry if not everyone has a phone – more than one participant can record data on a single device

If you are visiting the South Carolina coast and would like to participate in a one-time cleanup, you just need to install the app, create an account giving your home state as SC and open it on the beach. Even if you’re just picking up a couple of things, it helps us to have that data for analysis. Thank you in advance!

View Beach Cleanup Reports

Create or Manage a Beach Cleanup Group

View Terms and Conditions

Recycle your Beach Plastics with TerraCycle!

TerraCycle is Eliminating the Idea of Waste® by providing recycling solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste. DHEC is proud to promote the TerraCycle Beach Plastic Cleanup Program, which allows you to send rigid plastics (found during your beach cleanups) to the company for recycling. Participation is completely free and voluntary. At this time, TerraCycle is looking specifically for plastics found on the beach. Visit the TerraCycle website to learn more about the Beach Plastic Cleanup Program, and check out their Beach Plastics Guide for a quick summary of the program. TerraCycle operates a similar program for recycling cigarette butts through their Cigarette Waste Recycling Program.