Wednesday, October 1, 2014

International Coastal Cleanup Day...

was officially September 20th. However, in our area September 27th was used as an additional day to participate. Ted's company gives back to the community throughout the year, including in this way. When we join these events we wear red shirts that say "Spirit of Service". When we arrived at First Landing State Park the ranger explained that we would be divided into groups of 3 or 4 to walk down the beach and even into the dunes, which are usually off limits. 
A good morning's work!

We linked up with Bill and Betsey and hit it off right away because they are scuba divers too! We spent 90 minutes walking along the beach; other groups were scattered in front and behind us. Betsey recorded the items collected on the official Ocean Conservancy tally sheet, and we carried trash bags.

Now, you might think that with all those people walking the same stretch of beach there wouldn't be much trash left to pick up. Mostly what we found were cigarette butts, pieces of styrofoam, plastic wrappers, bottle caps, and micro plastic. Think of how light those things are. Our group alone collected 15 pounds of that kind of trash. Isn't that amazing? Sad, too.

Now:

Multiply that by 648,015 volunteers,
who collected 12,329,332 pound of trash,
on 12,914 miles of coastline.

What did they find? Check out this infographic from the Ocean Conservancy!


And the weirdest items found?


Truthfully, we four agreed that it didn't feel like "community service". We walked on along a beautiful beach on a sunny, warm day chatting with new friends. It was about as good as Saturday gets. 

Click here for more about the Ocean Conservance and the 2014 Coastal Cleanup. 

5 comments:

  1. What an awesome idea. It is sad that there is so much trash in the ocean (I've read that there are islands of garbage in some parts of the ocean) but every little bit helps.

    It bums me out the National Forest Service does *nothing* like this near us. In fact, it is illegal to organize your own small cleanup party to pick up trash in the National Forest near us. I know this because a group of us got cited for it. Unbelievable. (and believe me, the USFS does no cleanup of their own - they are too understaffed).

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  2. When we lived in Austin, we participated in the Underwater Lake Clean-Up at Lake Travis (frequented by boaters, scuba divers, swimmers,)...it is amazing what people will throw in the water...We found mostly cans, bottles etc., but it was not unheard of to find couches, beds and other furniture in 50-60ft of water....

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  3. Well done to you and all those who took part. Have a tremendous Thursday.
    Best wishes Molly

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  4. We Beaglebratz wanted tue stop by an'thank-u fer stoppin'by our bloggie this mornin' Well we wuz gonna say we cooda helped BUTT since u didn't find anything edible, we probably woodn't b much help. We shure wooda enjoyed the walk tho.

    That wuz a great job u'all did - it iz amazin'what sum peepz leeve out there.
    Shiloh-Lord of the Manor an'Diva Shasta

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  5. What a fabulous idea! I was so angry when I saw people dumping their trash on the rocks at the beach this summer
    Retro rover

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