RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — Palm Beach County students are helping scientists answer a deceptively simple question: Where does our trash go once it starts floating through local waterways?
ANGARI Foundation plans to release bright orange, eco-friendly drift cards into the water on Nov. 10 at noon as part of its Lagoon Drift Card Study. Members of the public are then being asked to find the cards and report where they ended up.
“So we're basically trying to track our trash,” Laura Jessop with ANGARI Foundation told WPTV. “So we put these eco-friendly drift cards in the water. They're going in on November 10 at 12 p.m., and we need the public to go out and find them.”
The idea is to use the cards as stand-ins for other objects floating on the surface.
“Everything that floats on the surface, that's what we're sort of tracking right now,” Jessop said.
Finding the places where floating trash accumulates
Each card found by a member of the public becomes another piece of information for the study.
Jessop said knowing where the cards eventually turn up can help researchers identify places where floating debris could be accumulating.
“They're bright orange, and if they report them to us, we can then look at where our trash is accumulating and really target those areas,” she said.
The project involves Manatee Lagoon, where some of the drift cards will be released.
Rachel Shanker with Manatee Lagoon said participating in the project can provide information that may ultimately help protect Florida's environment.
“Here at Manatee Lagoon, we're so excited to be a part of this study where we can collect data and learn how to better preserve and protect Florida's environment and wildlife for future generations,” Shanker said.
Students take science from the classroom to the lagoon
The study isn't limited to scientists and environmental organizations.
Students from Palm Springs Community Middle School are creating their own drift cards and will release them at Manatee Lagoon on Nov. 10.
A teacher participating in the project told WPTV the experiment gives students the opportunity to connect what they're studying in class with an actual environmental project.
“My students are creating drift cards which they will be releasing on November 10 here at Manatee Lagoon, and they are doing this to track the pollution in the waterways and apply what we're learning in the classroom to the real world,” she said.
And the students aren't sending anonymous pieces of orange material into the water.
They're making the cards their own.
One student decorated a card with water, a sun and a shark, before adding a marine-themed message: “You're 'fintastic.'”
Another decorated a card as an ocean scene with a simple message for whoever eventually discovers it: “Love your ocean.”
A hands-on lesson with a real destination
For students, the cards turn an environmental lesson into something tangible.
They create the cards, release them, and wait to see where currents carry them. If members of the public find and report their locations, those discoveries become part of the study.
That provides a real-world demonstration of something that can otherwise be difficult to visualize in a classroom: What happens to floating material after it enters a waterway?
For the broader community, it also turns a walk along the water into an opportunity to participate in local science.
If you spot one of the bright orange drift cards, it may be more than something that washed ashore. Its location is precisely the information researchers are looking for.
Manatee season is approaching
The experiment comes just before another important date for the Lake Worth Lagoon.
Manatee season officially begins Nov. 15.
Shanker said cooler temperatures help bring manatees back toward Manatee Lagoon.
“As the water temperatures drop, they start coming here to Manatee Lagoon for our warm water outflow,” Shanker said.
Manatee Lagoon plans to celebrate the beginning of the season with a kickoff event Nov. 21.
For the students creating drift cards, meanwhile, the next milestone comes Nov. 10, when their colorful creations leave their hands and begin their journey through South Florida's waterways.
Where they end up is part of the experiment.
Who finds them could be anyone.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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