Beverly's Vacation Beach Cleanup Day 1 - 10/2/09

This is the first post of Beverly's Vacation to Rhode Island where she decided to collect trash for 20 minutes at several different beaches. She found The Daily Ocean through Siel's green LA girl blog when she interviewed me a little over a month ago and posted it on her site.

Beverly and I have been emailing back and forth for awhile as she prepared for her trip and during her time in Rhode Island. I am excited to share with you what she found, saw, and thought as she took up my invitation to be part of...

The Daily Ocean's Community Count - If you can't join me in Santa Monica, you are invited to take 20 minutes on any beach near you to collect trash, weigh it, take pictures of what you see and find, send them to me with your feedback and I will post it here just like I am about to do with Beverly's trip.

She is the first person to take me up on this and I am very grateful. Want to join her?

Newport County Beaches – Beach Cleanup Project - October 2-6, 2009

Vacation Beach Clean Up – The Start of an Idea
It’s fun when an idea takes root and grows. For this idea, I read Siel’s (LA Green Girl) blog about Sara and The Daily Ocean, and got in touch with Sara. After she invited me to join her in Santa Monica for beach clean up – and I had to say I was actually in Washington, DC – I realized I could do a beach cleanup project while on vacation in Newport, Rhode Island. So, the idea grew. I looked up some beaches, ran them by SurfRider Rhode Island, and got started as soon as my vacation began. Sara was encouraging and helpful with advice, and shared my plans on her blog. I was ready to start.

Newport County Beaches

Atlantic Beach (Middletown)/Easton’s Beach (Newport) October 2: 8 lbs. 13 ozs. collected

My first beach for clean up. Atlantic and Easton’s Beaches are side by side in a long crescent. Cliff Walk and Newport mansions rise up on one side and smaller houses dot the hill on the other. It’s sunny, and there are lots of birds and clamshells and small crabs everywhere I look. It’s low tide. No trash at first, but then I see some plastic which I pick up. I relax, and then laugh at myself. How bad is it to be glad to see trash at a beach?

Gooseberry Beach (Newport) October 2: 4 lbs.collected

I walk and pick up pieces of glass, golf balls – and more and more plastic. Twenty minutes go by and I’m not even to Atlantic Beach yet. So, I pick up trash for 40 minutes while the gulls look on as they poke at the shells. They’re having lunch. Their cries sound human.

I weigh my trash. It’s the first time using the scale and after a few tries I get 8 pounds, 13 ounces. That’s more than Sara usually gets, I think. I have to make sure to say I collected trash for 40 minutes, not 20.

Gooseberry Beach (Newport) October 2: 4 lbs.collected

I added Gooseberry Beach to my list as an afterthought. Gooseberry Beach is on Ocean Drive near the mansions on Bellevue Avenue. As I park I meet a surfer who’s just leaving the beach. He tells me in off season I can ignore the towing signs, and thanks me when I tell him about the beach cleanup project.

Gooseberry Beach is a tiny jewel of a beach. In just 10 minutes I’ve been up and down the entire beach and collected 4 lbs. of trash – a child’s dress, bottles and more pieces of plastic. It’s a beautiful view looking out. The water, rocks and some stunning houses in the distance. I’m glad I can share this view amongst some of the priciest real estate around.