It was so beautiful that my boys spent the good majority of our 20 minutes running around and digging in the sand. My daughter, on the other hand, was right by my side for the entire 20 minutes. She spent her time focused and saying things that make being a parent SO rewarding....
"I think the Earth likes us."
".... because we pick up the trash that it can't reach. The Earth doesn't like all this trash... it wishes that it had arms so it could grab it all, but it can't...."
Like everything in life... it's always more fun with someone by your side. And clean-ups are no exception...during our 20 minutes, my daughter reminded me of another reason why it's so great to have a partner in picking up litter... especially as we were picking up the cigarette butts and I would miss some and she would miss some....
"It's good we do this together because you see stuff that I don't see and I see stuff that you don't see."
As we were leaving the beach, a father was playing soccer (ok... tapping around the ball) with his (probably) 18 month old son. His son saw me with our buckets and reached into the sand... he walked towards me with a handful of sand and wanted to put it in the bucket. "That's the good stuff." I told him as he put it in my hand. The father quickly took notice of the contents of our buckets and asked... I told him what we were doing and why we do it and of course how many cigarette butts we had picked up in 20 days. All the while his son kept giving me sand... and then as he put the sand in my hand.... I said to the Dad, "Just think if he grabbed cigarette butts while he was picking up handfuls of sand." And he said,
"Oh... he did... a little bit ago." :(
20 minutes on November 15, 2010
Total amount of litter by weight: 14.3 oz
Cigarette butts: 526
Total amount of cigarette butts picked up off of Wrightsville Beach, NC in 21 days:
9,253
great entry Danielle! I liked how the post was a story of the collection that involved your daughter, and the 18 mnth. old with his dad. Keep up the great work!
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