After an afternoon of playing in the pool, we headed to Wrightsville Beach with our friend Tracy and her two kids-- Liam and Emma. We attempted to go to Johnnie Mercer's Pier, but even at 7 PM parking at the pier was packed... so we headed a few accesses down to Access 18.
It was a good call. Looking north down the beach strand, people were everywhere... but for the most part everyone had cleared from access 18. I say that's a good thing because when the beach is covered with people, it's often hard to know what has been left behind.
As usual, when we come to the beach with my kids friends... they do a lot of playing. But what's great is that in the midst of playing they always find the time to pick up the litter that's around them... running to us with handfuls of whatever they find. In fact, Liam ran to me with a rash guard that he found in the water. (
not on a person, of course ;) ) Have I mentioned that my kids favorite thing to find is beach toys?? By the end of summer, we're going to have a lot...
While I was walking over to take a photo for Tracy, I stopped in my tracks and said, "Did you accidentally dump your bucket???"
(Her answer was "no...") 4.5 trillion cigarettes are littered worldwide every year... I'm starting to wonder if that number is on the low side...
Awhile ago, someone told me the cigarette pack equivalent to how many butts we've picked up off of Wrightsville Beach. I just did the calculation.... at this point we've picked up the equivalent of over 953 packs of cigarettes. YIKES! Also, this clean up puts our total weight of litter collected off of Wrightsville Beach to over 100 pounds. *sigh* I have a feeling that number will easily double over the summer...
20 minutes on May 21, 2011 at Access 18
Cigarette butts: 740
Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 67 days:
19,073
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