Myrtle Beach State Park

The organization I volunteered with was Horry County Schools with the Early College High School. They volunteer four times a year doing a beach sweep at the Myrtle Beach State Park. Here the students, faculty, and community volunteers together to make sure the beach and state park are clean by picking up any trash. The reason I choose this volunteer activity is because ensuring that the beach and environment is clean is important to me. I enjoy going to the beach and get aggravated when I see individuals leaving their trash behind and littering. Not only is it improving our current environment but it also has a positive impact on the future generations to come. On Friday March 25th, we arrived at the Myrtle Beach State Park at 8:00am.

He informed us of about the different wildlife they see in the park. He mentioned several types of birds, fish, wolves, and sea turtles. With warmer weather arriving he warned us about sea turtle nests beginning to appear as the mating season is from May to October. Besides wildlife, he also talked to us about the effects littering has on the environment. One stunning statistic he said was that 9 billion tons of litter each year ends up in the ocean. Some of the most common items littered are cigarette butts and fast food trash. He also said the state of South Carolina is ranked as the state with the most littering offenses. A statistic I found about the effects of littering is that as a result of individuals littering nearly 1 million sea birds and 100,000 marina mammals die each year from being entangled in trash (Lake, 2015). The DNR officer than proceeded to inform us of what we can do to reduce the amount of litter effecting our environment. He reminded us about the importance of recycling to limit the amount of trash filling up our landfills. Not only does volunteering in beach sweeps reduce the amount of littering on our beaches, it only has a small effect on the overall issue. Educating the general public of the effects of littering and hopefully limiting the issue at the cause is the best way to reduce the trash

The structural-functional approach is defined as a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (Macionis, 2014). In other words, this approach compares the relationship between the parts of society and how different aspects of society function together. This can be applied to the beach sweep volunteering experience because littering effects our society and wildlife. The way the littering effects the function of our society can be due to its cost, removing litter costs a lot of tax payers’ money that could be used more beneficially somewhere else if not needed to clean up trash. Not only does littering piling up in unwanted areas look horrible, it also brings in rodents such as rats which can contain harmful diseases to humans. Litter also provides a fire hazard as a decent amount of litter is paper trash from fast food restaurants. These examples are direct reasons how structural-functional approach can be applied to the beach sweep volunteer