lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
7.5 pounds
994.2 pounds total
I collected only two cigarette butts during last night's twenty minute cleanup. Across the country in North Carolina, my friend Danielle went out for the same amount of time on her local beach and collected 218. A local pro-surfer came out with them and collected 158. This is the starkest contrast to date. Cigarette smoking is banned on Santa Monica's beaches, and not in North Carolina.
Walking back to the car, I knew the bag felt heavy. More to the point, it was heavy with flimsy plastic food wrappers and other plastic film. These items weigh very little by themselves. The sunset made a sharp contrast to the seven and a half pounds I collected in twenty minutes from a beach where I'm regularly in the water. Sometimes this beach cleanup project weighs me down.
It is my pleasure to pass on the good news that the CA Supreme Court upheld LA's Plastic Bag Ban! Read this post from Surfrider to learn more.
Last year my class went to a beach and we found a big, plastic sack on the sand. We completely filled it with plastic trash in a few minutes, and there was still so much garbage left on the beach. Mostly soft drink bottles and snack wrappers, but also discarded nets and random, unidentifiable pastic junk. I've been following your blog for some time (I don't really know how long, but at least a year and a half), but this post especially reminded me of that– the contrast you spoke about, perfectly said.
ReplyDeleteAndrea -
ReplyDeleteThank you for leaving me a comment. I am impressed with how long you have been blogging yourself. Also, thanks for following along on this Daily Ocean journey. It has taught me a great deal. Glad to know that you are getting something out of it too. And I too have found all the items you described. They are along this coast, as well as Mexico, and strewn across the rest of the world. We can change this though. We can.
thanks again -
Sara