Oceans 4ever Lake- to-Ocean Cleanup

Community Count Collection: Day 36

1.6 pounds

307.5 pounds total

The dynamic duo team of Alexa (daughter) and Cindy (mother) behind the tremendous

"Oceans 4ever" blog set up a joint cleanup with me.

Here's what we did. Last Sunday we went to our prospective bodies of water - me, Santa Monica beach, and them - their local lake in Indiana.

We then spent 20 minutes at sunset collecting trash off the shoreline. Here is what they have to say about their experience:

They found: 1.6 pounds in 20 minutes and only made it roughly 50 feet!

-one McD's coffee cup

-one Styrofoam cup

-countless cigarette butts

-two aluminum cans

-"TONS" of chip bags, small wrappers like Starburst and My Little Pony toy plastic wrappers, maybe from a Happy Meal?

-one paper McD's bag

-two shredded single use plastic bags

All of the items we found were very small in size, so we thought we'd have a paltry amount after 20.

We traveled a *very* short distance for the concentration of the clean-up! We dug things out of the shorleline, out of grasses, and bent down often as the shore drops off, so that might have taken a bit more time.

But it needs to be done and we want to do it much more often! We will be doing it every week. We met a man who camps in the adjacent campgrounds who says he does it often, too.

We've decided to do a monthly co-cleanup to highlight the fact that we are trashing more than just our coasts and oceans with single use plastics and disposable packaging. Thank you for the effort and support!! I look forward to more of these posts in the future!

They made a video of their experience too. Check it out below.