Volunteers of all ages turned out for a cheerful spring cleaning of Island beaches Saturday morning as part of the 26th annual Earth Day beach cleanup.

Spring cleaning spreads to the great outdoors this weekend with the Vineyard Conservation Society’s 26th annual Earth Day beach clean-up.

Islanders of all ages headed to the beach to pick up trash and celebrate Earth Day Saturday. The annual beach cleanups on the Island are as old as Earth Day itself.

The Vineyard Conservation Society’s annual Earth Day beach cleanup celebrates its 25th anniversary today. People from around the Island will gather this morning to scour the shoreline for litter. The event begins at 10 a.m.

Volunteers carrying large feed bags dotted the Island’s beaches Saturday as they collected trash for the Vineyard Conservation Society’s 24th annual Earth Day Beach Cleanup.

On Saturday, April 30, the Vineyard Conservation Society hosts a cleanup day held at beaches all over the Island.

Forty-six years ago today, the Vineyard marked the first Earth Day with a home-grown event.

April 22, 1970, the very first Earth Day, dawned pure and clear on the Vineyard. “One might almost have thought all the brouhaha about Earth Day was nonsense, and unnecessary . . . but by 5:30 p.m . . . it was evident that the Vineyard was far from unlittered,” a Gazette story said at the time.

Bob Woodruff and a group of about 60 others, including many high school students, collected more than 3,000 pounds of litter that day, hauling Mr. Woodruff’s oxcart along the roads of the Island and picking up all debris and trash in its path.

Thirty-five years ago today, some five dozen Vineyard residents gathered in Owen Park on Vineyard Haven Harbor and walked along Beach Road into Edgartown, picking up garbage along the way. They filled six trucks with more than two tons of trash, and brought the glass they gathered to the West Tisbury dump, where they gave a demonstration of what would grow to become the Vineyard's recycling program.

Flotsam and jetsam have drifted onto Island shores for centuries, although the volume and toxicity of beach trash has increased dramatically during modern times.

Today plastic trash is a blot on beaches, but thankfully it can be reduced simply by rolling up your sleeves and getting to work.