Your the only one I know that would understand, my friend Linda screams in the phone.. What, what… All the litter, can’t you do anything- it’s everywhere. she says. Linda lives in Sacramento and she is upset..
OK, I used to blog alot about litter, I used to pick up litter and trash everyday and to be quite honest, I got so disgusted and depressed about the unending amount of deliberate litter and trash on the streets. (see blog post), I just had to stop.. I was dreaming litter, I was feeling guilty for not going out everyday, I was becoming obsessed.
Well, due to friends like Linda and Sea Angels on Facebook, I am back to picking up litter and trash on the beach. Yes, I am disgusted and yes it’s depressing because 100% of the litter on the beach is preventable and 98% of the litter is deliberate.
My beach beat is about 1/2 mile round trip. I usually cover 30-40 feet tide. This is one day. 4 trash bags. Note how many bottles, cans, shoes, clothes, towels, toys, fast food, balloons and the strings, straws, eating utensils, plastic are in this mix. This is 3 mornings of litter, 5 trash bags- a narrow strip of coast (30 feet wide) for a total of about 3 miles and 4 hours. If I had covered the full beach from water to boardwalk, not given away to the homeless (coats, cans, bottles, shoes, socks) I would have had over 20 trash bags of preventable litter.
Another day, was not too bad, 2 trash bags,
Day 3 only 1 bag of trash. Again, bottled water, aluminum cans, beer (not allowed), broken toys, fast food, shoes, glass (not allowed) cigarette butts (not allowed)
In all and in 3 days, I have picked up 15 towels, 78 shoes, over 100 toys, broken and otherwise, over 50 articles of clothing, countless bottle caps, styrofoam plates, forks, spoons, knives, kleenex, napkins, tampax, wallets, broken cheap boogie boards.
In any 1 day on a round trip, there are an average of 5 piles like this of deliberate litter.
To find scads of litter, follow the seagulls, they pick and pick at litter, take it out of the trash cans.
I grew up on the beach. We went almost every day, with lunch. No fast food, no straws (hundreds are lying out there), no drink boxes, we had 1 thermos, like how much do you have to hydrate, great job of marketing. Hundreds of these are on the beach and the plastic from zipper all over..
Thousands of bottlecaps. I only pick up the visible litter, not the bottle caps that get stepped on and ground into the sand. The problem is the animals think this is food, they eat it and get eaten.. Clear bottle caps get hidden.
I think one of the worst things and sorry to prejudge these people, because I don’t know if they do this themselves. I have picked up litter right by people standing there. Thank you for doing that, they say.. Why don’t you pick it up?
Dog walkers, nature lovers, other people walking, all say thank you, how easy it would be it they just carried a small bag and picked up a few pieces.
Great web sit Cathy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Check it out 🙂
Pure Ignorance and no excuse for it….. this mess is caused by lazy people who don’t give a hoot about the mess they leave behind for others to clean up. I have been on many beaches all over the UK and Europe and seen the same thing even though there are usually bins just a short walk away (You usually walk past them on the way from the beach!).
I can’t say I am as obsessed as the author but it does grind me to see the litter everywhere. All you can do is make sure that you don’t add to it, we always put our rubbish back in the beach bag and bin it on the way back to the hotel etc….