CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Padre Island woman is cleaning up the beaches and she's doing it one toy at a time.
Evelyn Pless-Schuberth has been picking up discarded beach toys in good condition, and then placing them in bags.
Pless-Schuberth has been picking up toys since 2017 in hopes that they will be reused.
They are free to anyone who wants them, and Pless-Schuberth said the idea came from her time living in Berlin, Germany.
"In Germany you did a lot more recycling than here and, for me, its just a waste of money to see these new toys unused and ending up in the trash cans," she said.
Pless-Schuberth said she collected enough toys to fill sixty bags over the last year, and brought them to the Island Italian Restaurant on Padre Island.
She regularly works with four other people to pick up the toys and told 3NEWS that the peak time toys are left on beaches are Spring Break and over the summer.