One Good Deed

California Coastal Cleanup was first held in 1985 and has grown to what was labeled in 1993 by the Guinness Book of World Records as "the largest garbage collection".  Over 10 million pounds of debris has been collected by Californians in the past two decades.  If you take a look at the charts and graphs, the number of people and pounds of debris grew steadily for the first ten years but has now leveled out to average over 50,000 participants collecting approximately 850,000 lbs of debris annually. That’s a lot of trash. Considering that most of it is lightweight plastics and styrofoam the volume is even larger than it sounds. Plastic is a wonderful thing in all its multitude of uses but spend three hours walking along the shoreline picking up trash and you will realize what a scourge on the environment it is. Plastic bags, plastic bottle caps, plastic bottles, plastic straws, plastic spoons, plastic tarps, plastic cigar tips, plastic toys, plastic cups. They’re all there, washed up along the shore, and lots of them. Styrofoam too, I never want to see another piece of styrofoam again. And to think if fast food places were still using styrofoam McMuffin containers there would be even more of the stuff.

Crack bags (as described in the Pocket Guide to Marine Debris “These miniature baggies are found in several colors and are approximately one inch square in size") were found in vast quantities.  Glad I was able to look that up in the reference manual as there was much discussion in our group as to whether or not what we found were indeed drug paraphernalia or were the bags used somehow in fishing or by local craftspeople? Nobody seemed to know much about crack though one Berkeleyite I was eating lunch with said when she had tried cocaine it had been snorted in a line so crack probably worked the same way. In any event it erases some of the illusions I have about what a good neighborhood I live in. One lady found a drugstore bag of just purchased rubbing alcohol and lotion stashed behind a rock. The owner came by shortly asking for it, he’d stashed while walking because his pack had gotten too heavy.

It’s only one morning a year but Coastal Cleanup is an important reminder to dispose of trash properly. It’s heartening to see so many people participate, and a lot of kids too. Even though most of the teenagers were there just to get the volunteer credit, they couldn’t help but learn something through the experience. Maybe one day there won’t be a need for Coastal Cleanup.