lifeguard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 min.
5.8 pounds
1,221.7 pounds total
10 cigarette butts
Yes, this is yet another plastic water bottle but what I want to talk about is friendship and cigarettes. Not the kind you smoke, but the kind you pick up off the beach after other people have smoked them down to a nub. I met my friend Danielle who writes the blog, IT STARTS WITH ME over a year ago when she was in town visiting friends and decided to come out on a beach cleanup with me. She brought her amazing family along and together the 6 of us cleaned Santa Monica Beach for 20 minutes. After we finished, I thought what a shame she lived so far away (North Carolina) but that we'd stay in touch, establishing some kind of cool friendship online like you can these days.
Later that week or maybe more, Danielle emailed to ask permission to start a portion of her blog she'd call, Our Daily Ocean. I said sure right away! What a great idea! Wasn't this exactly my point anyway, that if you had the desire to make a change, all by your lonesome you could grab a bag anytime you wished and start a beach cleanup? 20 min. at a time, no big whoop, just grab and go?
Thrilled, I waited to see how our two blogs would develop together.
Where there was one we now had two people sharing this vision.
Well, on Labor Day Danielle hit a mega milestone. Turns out that banning cigarette smoking on the beach works. We've been comparing cleanups where I count the number of butts I find in my 20 minutes to compare to her cleanups on a beach where smoke 'em if you got 'em applies.
Here are the numbers:
60 cleanups: 367 cigarette butts in Santa Monica, CA
33 cleanups: 7,877 cigarette butts in Wrightsville Beach,. N.C.
She's also contributed over 300 pounds to the Community Count of The Daily Ocean, a section of this project where I invite anyone who wants to to do a 20 min. cleanup, weigh their collection, take a few snaps and write a brief description of your experience. I then add you straight onto my blog in a post dedicated to your efforts. To date, the Community Count is over 1,063 pounds.
Join Us! Do a Community Count cleanup - here's how
Do a Community Count Cleanup for Danielle too - here's how
Do one cleanup and share it with us both!
The point is to grow, to share, to spark a change. Are you in? Won't you join us?
