Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Day 46 - August 19

Life Guard Station 26, Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 minutes
estimated trash collected today - 1.3 lbs.
estimated trash collected to date - 254.4
I was so excited on the way home from collecting today that I only weighed in 1.3 pounds. I called Garen to share my excitement. "Isn't that great," I said. His reply, "Yeah, a cloudy day in the middle of the week is good for the beach." Rats, I thought. I had just felt hopeful and was perhaps in shock that I had come away with so little trash that I hadn't had the chance to reflect when I called home. "Or, " he said, "your blog is working and no one's throwing trash on the beach anymore." HA! If only.
Sarah Fain, a fellow writer and blogger, left me this article to read on a previous post. Thank you Sarah. I said I would share. Here it is, click here for full article. It made me think about the price of bottled water to our environment, and to the communities that it comes from.
Read Sarah's blog, Starfish Envy.

Nowhere in Fiji Water's glossy marketing materials will you find reference to the typhoid outbreaks that plague Fijians because of the island's faulty water supplies; the corporate entities that Fiji Water has—despite the owners' talk of financial transparency—set up in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg; or the fact that its signature bottle is made from Chinese plastic in a diesel-fueled plant and hauled thousands of miles to its ecoconscious consumers. And, of course, you won't find mention of the military junta for which Fiji Water is a major source of global recognition and legitimacy.
This is not a great picture, or should I say that it falls short of illustrating what I meant it to. What I wanted to convey was complete overwhelm. Sometimes at the tide-line, the sea weed is pushed together and tangled with trash. Today I came upon a patch that was so thick with plastics and other artificial items that I picked what I could, and had to leave the rest.
Many people talked to me today. That isn't always the case.

- 2 people asked me what I was doing and asked to see what was in my bag. They commented that trash was everywhere, even on Mt. Mc Kinnley. I agreed, crest fallen, and walked away to pick up more. What else are you going to do?

- 1 person thanked me.

- 1 person asked if I had seen his lost head phones.

- 1 person said thank you as I handed them the Daily Water Bottle for it's cash refund. Her was diligently searching through trash cans for similar recyclables.