Monday, February 15, 2010

Venice Del Play Camp - Feb. 15th, President's Day

COMMUNITY COUNT COLLECTION - DAY 24
Venice Del Play Campers
1.5 pounds collected in 7 minutes (their lunch arrived. pizza, yum!)
154.9 pounds total
Although as you can see from the picture above that finding trash on the beach is not fun, it was such a pleasure for me to go out to my local beach, right where I collect trash at sunset, and find 27 sandy, wonderful kids waiting there to do a beach cleanup with me. Thanks to Tiff for setting up the event. I hope to come back for many more.
What did we find? Well, the usual suspects. Small bits of plastics, to go utensils, cigarette butts, plastic bottle tops, and....straws.
Here is an example of a small plastic bit that this camper wanted me to pay special attention to.
They worked in teams of two, using Tiff's plastic sandwich bags from a previous tie-dying project, (great example of REUSING something), and spanned the beach between tower 26 and 27. After a few minutes it became apparent to me that my usual 20 min. beach scour would be way too much for these guys, especially with their impending pizza lunch soon to arrive.
So after about 7 minutes of enthusiastic beach cleaning, we showed each other our findings, I passed out hand wipes, pizza was served, and my husband and I weighed their trash.
Connor (not pictured above) and his friend whose name I didn't catch, so sorry, won for most trash collected. Carmen was ready with two gold pirate coins as prizes to save the day!
Yes, in the middle of February my town looks like this. 66 degrees and sunny. There are pros and cons to all cities, but it is hard to remember the cons on a day like today.
We wrapped it up at lunchtime while they were busy munching pizza.
Here's what we discussed:

1. please use reusable water bottles to avoid the plastic waste of store bought bottled water.

2. avoid/refuse using plastic items like plastic grocery bags, go reusable!

3. plastic never bio-degrades so we need to be very careful with how much of it we are consuming.

4. many marine animals eat plastic trash if it makes its way into the oceans. this causes them to get sick and sometimes die.

5. storm drains from all over the city are connected, and when it rains the water pushes everything thru, (even from far away like downtown LA) into the ocean.

6. stay out of the water for 3 days in LA if it has rained because things you can't see wash into the ocean too with the rain and can get you sick.

7. But you can help by making sure that you pick up your doggies poop so it doesn't get into the ocean because it is one of the biggest contributors of the bacteria that gets humans ill.

Like I said above, I really enjoyed myself and I hope to be back for more!

Day 97 - Feb. 13

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 minutes
1.3 pounds
396.9 pounds
The sun was well into setting when I arrived tonight. I had been at Santa Monica High School with Team Marine who have been very busy lately. If you would like to learn more about these eco-minded high school superheroes please visit their blog.

We recently went to local Middle Schools to present their 10R curriculum and lead the students through experiential lab projects, (also designed by Team Marine) to illustrate the various environmental problems facing our planet like global warming and ocean acidification.
They constantly amaze me.
You can join Team Marine's efforts by signing their petition to ban single use plastic bags in Santa Monica. Here is the link.