Mrs. Katy Smith: Leading Marine Debris Education Along Georgia’s Coast

Wayfinder Society is for environmental educators who believe in the power of collective action. It is an online platform hosting a robust offering of classroom and teaching resources that makes it easy for educators to create a fun, dynamic, and engaging classroom and to inspire their students through environmental awareness and action. Every other month, we highlight an educator in our network.

As a Public Service Faculty at the University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, she also provides field-based education and camp programs for non-profit groups, churches, cultural and workforce development programs and conservation groups regularly. All these programs focus on a combination of topics and activities related to water resources, wetlands, marine biology, marine debris and microplastics. Mrs. Smith’s most recent endeavor was a collaboration with a local middle school, Glynn Middle School, in which she and her community partner, Heritage Works Inc., implemented an Eco-Club supported by NOAA Planet Stewards. Mrs. Smith led the after-school initiative and inspired students in grades 6-8 to remove litter from the school grounds and raise awareness school-wide about ways to reduce single use plastics and protect the environment from plastic pollution. In the end, twenty Eco-Club students conducted 7 cleanups around the school and removed 1,675 debris items from the coastal environment, 53% of which was plastic! The club was featured in a NOAA Education Earth Day article as well as local media article. Mrs. Smith will continue to work with Glynn Middle School again during the 2024-25 school year and hopes to bring this impactful initiative to other middle schools in the area. 

In addition, Mrs. Smith has led a variety of marine debris programs over the years including the third-grade program, “Reading Between the Lines: Marine Debris Education for Children in Georgia,” and the seventh-grade program, “Salt Marsh Soldiers Tackle Marine Debris on the Georgia Coast“. Many of the deliverables created for these projects are still in use today like this educational booklet and a short film titled, “Tackling Trash in the Golden Isles”. Mrs. Smith is an exceptional collaborator who strives to bring current science into the classroom, connect diverse partners, inspire citizens and engage students of all ages in coastal conservation and marine debris prevention. 

Since 2010, Mrs. Smith has worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the impacts of marine debris and microplastics and has inspired many local organizations and individuals to engage in marine debris prevention through educational programs she has offered across all age groups. One community campaign Mrs. Smith was integral in establishing is a Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) she initiated in 2014 with the local Keep America Beautiful affiliate program, Keep Golden Isles Beautiful. The campaign, called “This is Litter Too,” has now grown into a collaborative coast-wide campaign called Georgia’s Coast is Not an Ashtray. A decade of cigarette litter prevention has raised awareness about the nation’s #1 most littered item, cigarette butts, along the Georgia coast by bringing together dozens of environmental groups, engaging hundreds of volunteers, educating thousands of citizens and preventing hundreds of pounds of cigarette waste from entering the environment and ocean. 

Mrs. Smith is also responsible for introducing local environmental groups and schools to the program, TerraCycle, which is now being used by various groups and schools to collect non-recyclable waste like plastic snack packaging, markers and cereal bags, diverting these persistent plastic waste streams from landfills and preventing this waste from potentially ending into the ocean. Mrs. Smith always looks for creative ways to educate students and partners about coastal habitats and the ocean and encourages everyone to make small daily changes in their habits to benefit the environment collectively in big ways. One of her favorite ways to inspire youth is to tell them that picking up even one piece of trash could potentially save an animal in the ocean from getting sick or entangled, so even small pieces of debris can make a big difference. Mrs. Smith finds creative ways to weave topics together so that individuals are inspired by the big picture of global ocean health in relation to their daily routine. 

Mrs. Smith plans to use the Wayfinder Society Educator Mini-Grant funds to support her creative education and outreach activities in the Golden Isles community, including continuing the Eco-Club she established at Glynn Middle School last year, which aims to prevent litter on campus from becoming marine debris, particularly since the school is located adjacent to sensitive salt marsh habitat and the coastal aquatic ecosystem. 

Congratulations Mrs. Smith for being awarded the September 2024 Wayfinder Society Educator Mini-Grant. We cannot wait to see how you utilize the funds to continue your impact in schools across Georgia’s coastline. Thank you for all you do and best wishes on your marine debris education journey!