LI business owner shares 12-hour long process to cleanup Jones Beach after the Fourth of July fireworks

Once the fireworks stopped lighting up the sky over Jones Beach, Zuleima Trujillo and her staff of 25 people went up and down the over six miles of beaches cleaning it up for guests for the next day.

Jon Dowding

Jul 6, 2024, 2:13 AM

Updated 9 days ago

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A Long Island business owner partnered with New York State Parks staff to clean up Jones Beach after a busy Fourth of July holiday.
State Parks staff say over 194,000 people headed out to Jones Beach for the annual fireworks show Thursday.
Once the fireworks stopped lighting up the sky over Jones Beach, Zuleima Trujillo and her staff of 25 people went up and down the over six miles of beaches cleaning it up for guests for the next day. Trujillo owns Blessed Cleaning in North Massapequa, which specializes in residential and commercial cleaning services.
"Now we're bringing the office to the beach,” she said. "We work hard to restore the beach for the next day."
They started at midnight and finished at around 11 Friday morning.
"Packing garbage from Field 6 to Field 1. It's a long walk on the beach. We do the boardwalk as well,” said Trujillo.
Jones Beach State Park Assistant director of operations Bridget Nolan says there’s a lot of work that goes into keeping Jones Beach the jewel it is.
"Especially when we have major events, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes,” she said. "When we have that volume of people, there's usually a lot of garbage, there's really little to no room to get in to clean during the events. So, most of the cleanup goes on afterwards."
Trujillo says Field 4 had about three times the amount of trash than the other fields, but the amount of trash wasn't their only obstacle.
"It was raining last night and [there was] no moon outside so it was very dark,” said Trujillo. “It slowed us down."
Trujillo immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia and started her business as a single mom. She never imagined her small business would give her the chance to help the community at this scale.
"It's very nice to give back to the community,” she said. "Helping the families, the islanders to find a clean beach is really nice."
This is the second year in a row Trujillo and her company cleaned up the beach after the fireworks show.


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