Day 201 - Feb. 23, 2011

**my guess is that this pink plastic wrapper held a valentine's day gift**

life guard tower 26 (in the background...) - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

2 pounds

759.3 pounds total 

This photograph was taken about twelve feet from the one that you see above it.

TAKE THE QUIZ: ARE YOU A DISPOSABLE BAG ADDICT? 

My friend Siel of green LA girl gets all the credit for posting about this quiz from the website called re-nest - abundant design for green homes. 

Answer honestly. "We've been there too..." 

How long to you think this plastic bottle has been tossing about in the ocean? There were micro-colonies of algae, a few shells in and on the bottom of the bottle, and other misc. sea life threads hanging on. 

Bonnie - of the blog The Plastic Ocean Project and ocean activist extraordinaire said to my friend Danielle who writes, It Starts With Me, that "beach cleanups are gyre cleanups." I like that. It makes a lot of sense. 

Who knows how long this plastic bottle kicked around for before it got spat back out onto a beach? 

Did it make it to the middle of the North Pacific Gyre and back? 

Well, the good news is is that it is out of the water now. 

If you have read The Daily Ocean before, you know that I have a thing for birds. Crows on the beach are my most favorite. Crows are quick witted, and gregarious. I imbue them with so much personality that when I see them on the beach I feel as if they must have come down for a purpose. 

Day 191 - Feb. 2, 2011

lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

3.2 pounds collected

722.5 pounds total

COMMUNITY COUNT - Day 109 

Dean Miya

trash collected for 20 min.

3.2 pounds

666.4 pounds total

Daily Ocean combined total - 1,388.9

This is the lifeguard's water bottle that was sitting out on the deck as he was shuttering up 26 for the night. My first thought was that it would be great to take a picture of it, but I hadn't even seen the RISE ABOVE PLASTICS logo that was on his KLEEN KANTEEN stainless steel bottle. The discovery was a huge bonus to me. Surfrider's RISE ABOVE PLASTICS campaign is tremendous. You can get involved where ever you live, coastal or not. Check it out!

The Wake Project interviewed me about The Daily Ocean recently. I hadn't heard of their organization before they contacted me, but now I feel the need to pass along a link to them so that you too can learn about their amazing efforts. 

"WAKE IS AN AWARENESS INITIATIVE THAT SEEKS TO EDUCATE PEOPLE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF SHARKS, RAYS AND TUNAS TO OUR PLANET'S FRAGILE OCEAN ECOSYSTEM. WE SPEAK FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES."

Thank you to the Wake Project for taking an interest in The Daily Ocean. 

What kind of strange plastic bottle is this?

This startling fact is from the Britta Filter For Good PSA collaboration with the Sundance Channel:

"LAST YEAR THE USA USED ENOUGH PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES TO STRETCH AROUND THE EARTH OVER 190 TIMES."

My friend Danielle's short film about her cigarette butt beach cleanup in Wrightsville Beach N.C. is one of three winners at this year's Sundance Festival. Here is a great site to find out more about all three, the talented filmmakers who made them, and the inspiring stories that sparked the short films. 

Yay Danielle! What a pleasure it has been to see this grow! You are tremendous!

I want to thank Dean for coming out with me tonight. It was over nine months ago that he contacted me for the first time when he say this blog after recognizing the stretch of beach as the very spot that he surfed at most often. Since then, he has joined me several times, while also volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, Sea Shepard, and spending weeks down in the Gulf this past year getting up close to all the devastation. He inspires me. When you mention how cool it is that he does all of this, he simply says, "It can't be about me all the time."

We were talking about how depressing beach cleanups can be. As you can see from the pictures, the tide was waaaaay out, revealing a plethora of plastics and other soggy trash. We agreed after a minute or two that cleaning it up has to start somewhere. And further agreed that we find it very distressing that animals mistake this trash for food. 

Many jellyfish were stranded by the receding tide last night. I nearly picked up a jelly instead of the plastic next to it. They looked identical to me for a moment. 

Garen and I are buying our plane tickets to Chile this week. We leave the 10th of March from LA to fly to Chile to join a 5 Gyres expedition where Garen will research the effects of plastic micro-pollutants on plankton. If you would like to join an expedition with 5 Gyres find all the info here. If you would like to learn more about the one that we will be joining, and why we want to go with them, check out our story here. Hey, check out both if you feel inspired too! We hope you do.

WINNING SHORT FILM FROM SUNDANCE

"IT STARTS WITH ME" - a short film by Destin Cretton

My friend Danielle of the blog, "It Starts With Me," was featured at the Sundance Film Festival as a winner of the Brita Filter For Good Contest. I am so inspired by watching her in this brief film. 

She came out onto the beach in Santa Monica with me over the summer. This film is about the cigarette butt cleanups that she started when she got home. So far she has collected way over 13,000 cigarette butts off of Wrightsville Beach, in NC. 

What strikes me most about the film, is that you never know who you are going to meet, connect with, what inspiration sparks from that chemistry, and then all of the wondrous outcomes that develop because of these chance encounters. 

I am so grateful that they included a brief bit in the film on The Daily Ocean. A special thank you to the film's director Destin Cretton for including me in his project. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did. Here is how to find Danielle, and how to find Mark. Enjoy.

Day 186 - Jan. 16, 2011

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

2 pounds

712.5 pounds total

Every once in a while, I like to dedicate a day's post to my fellow bloggers by sharing a bit of what they have been up to. 


I'll start with "The Flotsam Diaries - A chronicle of human debris. Washed up, blown in, left behind." written by Harry in Northern Maine. 

"In two weeks in the heart of winter on a quiet Maine beach, I've plucked up nearly 1,000 pieces of manmade garbage. Along 500 feet of tideline. Some may be remnants of summer's revelry; some has clearly washed in from many miles away. And it just keeps coming."

This picture reminds me of Daniel in North Carolina who has been collecting cigarette butts, and the other trash that she finds, off of her local beach. She has found 

13,470 cigarettes in 37 days

I'm speechless. 

 This band-aid got "washed" clean. Whenever I find them on the beach, I always wonder why people wear them into the water in the first place? Band-aids come off in the shower...

A blog that I've started to follow more recently has posted their take on the Oregon State Univ. press release issued by Dr. White that calls into question the actual size of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." The woman who writes the blog, Bonnie, has been out with Algalita and 5 Gyres four times. I think that she has something to contribute to the conversation.

The Plastic Ocean Project 

The IBRRC - International Bird Rescue Research Center - is an amazing operation. Their first center sprung up in Long Beach many years ago. More recently, they have been treating the birds that are the victims of the BP Oil Disaster in Louisiana. They made their fundraising goal for the month of Dec. which is a good thing considering, 


"In 2010, we treated nearly 5,000 birds in our two centers – everything from pelicans to tiny sandpipers to lesser-known fulmars. Last month we also cared for a tundra swan that was found cold and weak in a farmer’s field."

Garen and I are approaching the count down until we head out with the 5 Gyres Institute to cross the South Pacific researching marine plastic pollution. 2011 feels full of promise and adventure. I hope that who ever is reading this finds the same.

This quote is about writing, but can be applied to many creative endeavors. 

"if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." -- Anne Lamott

Day 181 - Dec. 27, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

by Sara and Garen

4.3 pounds total - 2.1 to the Community Count

(scroll down on the right side of my blog for more information on the Community Count)

706.6 total

769.8 Community Count total

**note - need to re-do the math on my friend Danielle's contribution - will get to that soon and re-post the total**
It was fun to have my husband Garen out with me today. We've been keeping a very low profile over the holiday.

The beach was a mess tonight from the recent deluge of rain we've had. Another storm is an hour north of the LA area as I type this. Winter can be a little depressing for beach cleanups. There's just so much that washes through the storm drains and down the streets into the ocean that then comes up onto the sand.

Mark Armen of Gulpable has a great video post about what he found in the LA rain off Venice Beach.
I'm out of touch with my online community so I took a minute before writing this post to see what some of my fellow friends/bloggers have been up to during this holiday season.

First up is my friend Danielle of It Starts With Me who is 33 Days into her own beach cleanup series called OUR DAILY OCEAN. She went out on Christmas Day with her family. What a great thing to do!

Harry of the Flotsam Diaries has a holiday message for us from Maine.

If you give a donation to the International Bird Rescue and Research Center before the end of the year your donation will be matched by a generous donor. They were on the front lines of the Deep Water Horizon oil disaster, helping distressed birds when they needed it most.
BEACHED ART: from my friend Anke in Germany who scours the coast of the Baltic Sea and makes incredible collages from her findings.

Speechless.

Day 178 - Dec. 12, 2010

lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

1.5 pounds

691.5 pounds total

Community Count Day 74 - Low Impact Betty

lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

.8 pounds

613.1 pounds total

Thank you Monica (the brains behind Betty) for trekking all the way from Silverlake to come and cleanup the beach!

Follow her on FB or Twitter and check out her impact-full blog - Low Impact Betty

I usually head out to the beach at sunset. Today was a rare snapshot of what the beach looks like before the end of the day.

"We probably won't find too much out here since the beach is raked around 7 a.m. and it's only 1:00," I said to Monica. But then I added, "I could be wrong."

There have been so many times that I have walked out onto the sand and gotten a first impression that it was "clean" only to find on closer inspection plenty to pick up off the sand.

Today was one of those days. The tally of pounds may not reflect this fact. All of the items we found were extremely lightweight. A plastic bag for example is only .25 ounces.

We talked about how most of what we were finding was made from plastics.

This is a Starbucks lid. Starbucks is starting a recycling campaign...how long has Starbucks been in business?

Here is a great piece that a Team Marine member sent around from Current TV called, "REDUCE YOUR FORKPRINT! THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF EATING OUT"

"Americans toss out enough plastic spoons, knives, and forks each year to circle the equator 300 times."
Branding is powerful. I would bet that this product begins with a "V" even though the label has been rubbed clean.

In the Dec. 13 issue of the New Yorker, Arrowhead Water took out a glossy two page ad 9 pages into the issue that is chock full with environmental spin. Water bottle sales are dropping. Damage control is necessary for their industry. How much do you think an ad like that costs?

I would bet that a company who felt confident in their product would not be shelling out the cash for an ad like that unless they were sweating a little.

Let's keep turning up the heat.

Buy a Klean Kanteen or EcoUsable Bottle for a loved one this holiday season, and watch companies like Arrowhead spin as fast as they can.

You'll see a trend from the other ads taken out in the front of the New Yorker:

Goldman Sachs (who needs more image spin than these guys?)

Chrysler (we know this company is not doing so well...)

Rolex (who needs a watch when you have a cell phone?)

Ford (these guys also need to pump it up to save their b-hind)

Dec. 12th and 81 degrees in Santa Monica. I'm not complaining, but didn't we say goodbye to summer months ago?

Although there is plenty on our beaches for me to pick up, we do not have tens of thousands of cigarette butts like they do in North Carolina where my friend Danielle Richardet lives.

She won the Britta Filter For Good film contest this year for her 20 minute cigarette butt cleanup that started because of a Daily Ocean cleanup that she came on over the summer. Danielle was shocked that we didn't pick up one cig. butt. I'm glad that we didn't find any that day. I usually get a few, but NOTHING compared to what she finds.

Her first day out in August she collected over 340! In 20 minutes! Now she's giving her elected officials presentations on the toxicity of cigarette butts while being filmed for a Sundance Channel short film by award winning Director Destin Cretton.

Here's a piece written on Danielle in her local Wrightsville Beach paper - StarNews Online.

Like the Grinch after embracing the spirit of Christmas in Whoville - I think my heart swelled two sizes two big when I read it this morning!

The last thing we saw when we were leaving the beach.

Day 176 - Dec. 3, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

1.9 pounds

688.8 pounds total

Community Count Day - 73

Aaron Richardet from North Carolina visiting Santa Monica

trash collected for 20 minutes

1.1 pounds

612.3 pounds total

A special thanks to Aaron for coming out with me on the beach. He is the husband of my good friend Danielle who writes a fantastic blog called "It Starts With Me" and is responsible for OUR DAILY OCEAN - a 20 min. cigarette butt cleanup on her local Wrightsville Beach, NC. She also weighs the trash she finds for my Community Count. Just love it!

Sara Sikich from Heal the Bay signing the reprinted version of AB 1998 - the statewide ban on single use plastic bags sponsored by Heal the Bay. She's all smiles in Sacramento as we concluded a press conference to show support to the local municipalities pursuing bag bans, and reviving AB 1998 for the Dec. special session before the Governor leaves office. Fingers crossed!

I've been meaning to include this quote by Nobel Peace Prize Winner from 2004

- Waangari Maathai

"Passion begins with a burden and a split second moment when you understand something like never before.

That burden is on those who know. Those who don't are at peace. Those of us who do know get disturbed and are forced to take action."

OUT OF TOWN FROM 11/28 - 12/2

First stop tomorrow is Sacramento where I will get to hang out with my lobby buddy Denis from the Surfrider So. O.C. chapter, which seems like a total kick ass operation.

I met her in Sacramento this year and lucky for me, she's up there again for another rally to Ban the Bag. We'll be attending the event for promoting momentum for the city-by-city Bag Ban at the State Capitol Building Steps on Monday morning.

I hope to get up there in time to do a Sacramento River cleanup.

Then it is off to the SF Bay area to see my friends, and back down through Santa Cruz in time for my husband's birthday on Thursday.

We tried to find a sustainable sushi restaurant to go to on his birthday in LA. NONE were found. Bummer. We need to take a cue from SF and Seattle.

More cleanups from my local beach will resume Friday when I meet with my friend Danielle's husband Aaron who is in town. She writes a great blog that I mention often called, It Starts With Me - check it out!

Day 170 - Nov. 9, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

2 pounds

675.6 pounds
It was a hard night to be out there. I took a few pictures of bigger pieces of trash when the light was just fading, but then my efforts quickly turned to the thousands of fragmented bits of styrofoam littering the high tide line. I spent 20 minutes picking up those bits, which is frustrating on many levels. The one that is sticking out in my mind as I write is that I couldn't possibly get it all. Maybe that is an appropriate metaphor for the frustrating nature of getting all the trash - mostly made from plastic - out of the world's oceans....
One great thing that happened was that a woman came up to me and asked, "Are you picking up plastic?" She'd watched the TEDx conference Great Pacific Garbage Patch that happened here in Santa Monica on Sat. hosted by the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Turns out we have a lot in common and she is up to great things, one of which is writing for the Huff Post on environmental issues. Here name is Deborah Bassett. We're going to hopefully go for coffee to break it all down. Thank you BIG time to the PPC for hosting such a world changing event!

Heard of EPIC CHANGE? Got to check this out!

They raise money to make loans to help organizations share their stories, then work to repay the loan which in turn goes on to foster other epic changes in still more communities!

One great message I just got on twitter was from a woman in Maui who spent 20 min. with 20 people to collect cigarette butt liter off the beach. They got 670 butts! Danielle of It Starts with Me blog came here over the summer and took back the idea of doing 20 min. cigarette butt collections to her Wrightsville Beach community in N.C.. Well thanks to social media more folks have heard of her efforts, and she is so gracious to always point back to The Daily Ocean but really the only, and coolest thing that matters is that people are getting totally inspired to clean up their beaches, learn about the issues surrounding all of that trash and they are sparking change! Couldn't really ask for more than that....

Here is PART TWO of Stuart Moody of Green Sangha's successful cigarette butt story:

A week after my experience in Marin (where someone was thankful for the info. about cig. butt liter he gave them), I was sitting outside the BART station in San Leandro, waiting for AC Transit. Next to me was a young man with nearly-shaved head, a tank top showing several tattoos, and arms nearly as broad as my legs. He threw a smoking cigarette to the ground. Heartened by my earlier experience, I began to tell him the same thing I had said in Novato. He wouldn't let me finish. "You mean I should throw it in the trash?" "Yes," I said, "after putting it out." He picked it up and tossed in the garbage can. I thanked him, and reflected silently: people generally do not want to do harm; if we can tell them nicely how to live more kindly on the earth, they just might be grateful for our advice.

A Tibetan Monk pouring sand from the mandala into the Santa Monica Bay

My friend Debbie works with Tibetan monks in Tehachapi CA. Last week they held a residency at the UCLA Hammer Museum where a team of trained monks drew a sand mandala that took them an entire week to complete. Then they had a ceremony - dedicating all of the focused power of concentrated loving compassion that went into the making of the mandala - swept the entire thing up - walked to the water from WESTWOOD and poured all the sand in as a prayer to the world.

Wherever that sand goes (mined from near their monastery in Nepal) their wish is that is spreads loving compassion to all the places, and beings it touches. Doesn't it make you feel better about the world that people like this, and events like these are going on amidst it all?

Day 167 - Oct. 27, 2010

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 min.

1.5 pounds

668.8 pounds
Tonight is the last night to vote for Danielle in the Britta Filter for Good Film Project. Her entry is called, "Our Daily Ocean: A Story of Butts." She's very gracious to consistently site her inspiration as this blog for her 20 min. beach cleanup in Wrightsville Beach, N.C. that she does with a twist, but all the action is because of her.

She counts the cigarette butts she collects during those 20 minutes and keeps a tally of those. So far in 15 days she has collected, (with the help of her three small children and husband Aaron) 7,360 CIGARETTE BUTTS. That's insane.

Hopefully a short film that will air during the Sundance Film Festival if she wins will go a long way to banning smoking on her home beaches in North Carolina. So vote for her tonight!
It was a gorgeous 84 degree October day here in Santa Monica with many surfers enjoying the waves until the sun went down and beyond.
CRUSH PROP 23 needs you! Sponsored by Credo, this campaign wants to get out the vote to squash Prop 23 on Tues.. You can type in your zip code and search for events in your area to:

STOP TEXAS OIL: HELL NO ON 23

Did you know that you can't recycle number 5 plastics?

Did you also know that most, if not all yogurt containers are made from number 5 plastic?

(I love yogurt!)

Did you also know that the chasing arrows symbol that we have all come to associate, or be synonymous with recycling, is not regulated?

At all?

I could put a chasing arrows symbol on my butt if I wanted. Well, you get the point. GENIUS marketing... BAG IT, the documentry is where I learned all the fun facts that I listed above.
I've started doing yoga again after a long hiatus. I've joined in on the odd class here and there over the last two years, (probably all of 5) and so the 5 minute headstand we did in class (I was against the wall for support...) has sent too much oxygenated blood to my head I think because all that is running through my head right now to end the post with is, "Ahhh... pretty. sunsets good. love California....pretty....ahhh.) Mix and match as you choose. I think I'll leave it there.