lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 minutes
9 people came out! (Kit, Bruce, Karen, Kevin, John, Mike, Dave, April)
and two more turned up just as we finished! Thank you to Mariko and Patty as well!
9.7 pounds
983.5 total pounds for the Community Count
THE DAILY OCEAN COMBINED TOTAL = 2,137.7 pounds of trash off beaches world-wide!
A big thank you to Dave and Kit. Dave (in the background) will be moving to Kauai in a couple weeks. We'll miss his laid-back, warm and inclusive spirit but he'll fit right in where he's going!
Good luck Dave and thanks for coming out this morning!
(Bruce, Kit and Karen)
They made sure I got a good look at a piece of steel re-barb pipe that would have really stung banging one of us in the head, or ankle, or worse when we took to the waves after the cleanup.
This cleanup is in preparation for the 2nd annual Tower 26 Surf Contest and Luau that starts tomorrow. Here's a link to the info on FB. Kevin, the organizer, has put a lot of heart and soul into the event. Thank you Kevin. He also has a brand called Tower 26 of great clothing and other cool gear, so check it out! This event brings all us surf dogs together for a weekend of community and easy-going competition. Come on down! The action is between Tower 26 and 25 starting early - 7:00 AM and going until noon. Then the same again for Sunday.
Body surfers go first! Woot!
And if you're lucky, you might win one of Kit and Bob's beautiful wave trophies - hand carved and painted by these two local artists and killer body surfers. Awesome.
We were commenting on how their wasn't a lot of trash out on the sand this morning. Then one of us strode over with this load, and I realized he'd gone out first while the rest of us were still blabbing.
He was the reason for our lighter load. He'd just cleaned up! So the pound or two we took off the beach after him had washed to shore in the 10 min. head start he'd had.....
As you can see, there's a plastic water bottle in his trash bag. The contest won't be handing these out. We've chosen to go another direction and got reusable water coolers. Bring your own water bottle, or use a paper cup we'll provide tomorrow if you're thirsty!
Why not just recycle plastic water bottles and be done with it?
1. Most of CA "recycled" plastic water bottles actually get shipped over to Asia in tankers where they fill up landfills in a lnad far-far away. True!
2. Plastic bottles that don't sit in landfills, or end up in the ocean, gets remelted (emitting toxins into the environment as they do) and then made into an inferior plastic product like playground equipment, which once broken and has reached the end of its life will then add to our overflowing landfills.
Or go to Surfrider's RISE ABOVE PLASTICS web page for info. too.
It really does matter what each person chooses to do in their day-to-day.
In fact, it is exactly these actions that change the world.
