The recent UK Marine Conservation Society’s fight against marine litter with the Big Beach Clean-up is a great contribution to marine and beach hygiene, collecting vast quantities of litter including invariably a lot of clinical wastes.

It’s not just a UK initiative. Worldwide, many environmental groups operate similar schemes, to assist communities clean their beaches of discarded litter, flotsam and jetsam.

But in America, things are always bigger and better. Cleaning up US beaches, an environmental group’s annual sweep of New Jersey’s 127 miles of beaches recovered much waste and some medical (clinical) wastes, but also explosives!

Thousands of volunteers took part Saturday in the clean-ups organized by Clean Ocean Action, which has been doing beach sweeps for 25 years. Congratulations to each and every one of them.

But among other wastes, an unexploded ordnance was found Raritan Bay Waterfront Park in South Amboy. The state police bomb squad unit and other law enforcement agencies responded to the scene, and no injuries were reported.