lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
11 pounds
1,107.5 pounds total
0 cigarette butts
June Gloom is what the locals call this month. A heavy marine layer blankets our coast for a few weeks, making sunset seem like it's an hour before its time.
After twenty minutes my bag was too full to continue even if I didn't adhere to a time limit. Gloomy would be one word I'd use to describe how I felt walking off the beach with 11 pounds of junk in less than half and hour.
I've avoided posting about last night's cleanup today mostly because it makes me revisit the dirty fact of 11 pounds in 20 minutes twice. My husband Garen reminded me that a post like this is even more urgent to share. This sentiment summarizes what I thought about while walking our dogs tonight.
In the face of such an overwhelming problem (plastic pollution and trash in our oceans) action can only inspire change. The how, when, and who of which are largely out of my hands. But still, taking action has to be enough sometimes. This shot of our beach doesn't capture the bits of plastic wrapping and bags tangled in every inch of the seaweed washed ashore.
I was too busy picking it up to get better pictures tonight.
Three people stopped to talk to me because the trash was so noticeable,
as if I would know the reason why. And there are so many reasons,
too many variables for one short post,
but the take home point is this, we connected person to person.
I connect with you person to person whenever you read one of my posts.
I'd like to think that each time this happens, a spark of change can occur.
I stuffed this in the leg of my wetsuit yesterday morning while body-surfing. Lots of trash on the beach means lots of trash in the water too. I get a double dipping of it some days.
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