Our Daily Ocean: Day 44

Back in September, our family made the decision to adopt Access 36 at Wrightsville Beach.  From August to our last clean up at Access 36-- that's 7 clean ups-- we've picked up (in order) 197, 215, 443, 434, 103, 315, and 101 cigarette butts..... that totals to a whopping 1,808 cigarette butts removed from Access 36!!  Joined my my mother-in-law... today was our eighth 20 minute clean up at our adopted access... AND... I'm happy to say that the cigarette butt counts are STILL on the decline!!  

Photo credit: my 6 year old daughter Claire 

More good news... my friend Ginger has been recognized as Wrightsville Beach's Volunteer of the Year.  YAY!!!  Back in September, Ginger wrote about me on the Wrightsville Beach Sea Turtle blog, 

"I am so impressed and inspired by her dedication to clean litter from Wrightsville Beach that I am thinking about joining her. Why not pick up cigarette butts for 20 minutes a day, two days a week?"  

Since then, Ginger has been contributing to the Community Butt Count.  Recently, she started picking up and counting the cigarette butts that she finds on her street.  Just walking 5 houses up from hers she picked up 553 and then on another day walking 3 houses up she picked up 383 cigarette butts!!!  Go Ginger!!!

One thing that we found a lot of today is straws... yes... again. (though I didn't take any photos... oops!)  Every Friday, I go to yoga and after yoga I go to Tidal Creek and get a smoothie.  For the past several months, I've been taking my own reusable water bottle and have them pour my smoothie in it in lieu of their compostable cups... AND... I don't take a straw.  Today, a fellow smoothie lover was admiring my Life Factory glass water bottle.... so I, of course, told her all about it and said, ".... and I don't take a straw either."  But... as I learned today...not everyone is like me....some people really "need" and like to use a straw.  Sooo... if you're a straw lover (like the lady I met today)... then you need to hop on over to Reuseit and check out the reusable glass straws.  Yup... glass straws!!  Sounds crazy... but it's not. If you're unsure about the glass straws... be sure to read this post on My Plastic Free Life ;) 

Oh yeah... and today we found another one of these messes....

A big mess held together by fishing line and string.

20 minutes on February 18, 2011

Litter by weight: 9.2 oz

Cigarette butts: 92

Total amount of cigarette butts picked up off of Wrightsville Beach, NC in 44 days:

14,393