But, just because there's less smokers DOES NOT mean that there isn't litter. There is always litter. In the middle of winter on the coldest of days, there was always litter to be found at the beach. Now that beach season is here... there's just more.
Besides all of the littered trash that we find... we also tend to find a lot of shoes. The day after we did our 73rd clean up, my friend Tracy called me to ask if I had went to the beach because a friend of hers had her shoes stolen and wondered if maybe I took them. Sorry! It wasn't me... we were 11 accesses away!
Tracy's call got me thinking about all of the shoes we find during our clean ups and the 46 shoes found by WB-Keep It Clean volunteers. Here is a very important tip for beach goers. Leave your shoes in your car. Seriously. There is just no point in wearing shoes to the beach. Ummm... unless, of course, you're going in the heat of the day and you have to walk across blazing hot sand. My advice would be to put your shoes in your bag or in something that you know you won't forget. :)
During this clean up we found 3.5 pairs of shoes. I feel that I should mention that when we do our clean ups... we often walk past shoes, towels, beach toys, or anything else that we hope has an owner. We leave them be (ok.. sometimes we move them away from the tideline) until we're leaving the beach in hopes that someone will come back for their forgotten items. But if they don't... we pick it up. That's what we do.
20 minutes on June 15, 2011 at Access 5
Litter by weight: 2 lbs 12.1 oz (not including the boogie board)
Cigarette butts: 68
Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 73 days:
21,506
A few years back shortly after my dad died I found I needed to walk and think or maybe more to not think. I walked along the ocean beach in San Diego, barefoot. Not intending to go very far, I walked, and walked and walked. I began to wonder what city I was in, so headed up the cliffs to a park to find out. I than noticed my feet naked feet were blistering and decided to start hobbling back on a narrow trail atop the cliffs overlooking the ocean. My shoe-less feet were really hurting, when I cam upon a pair of tattered Gilligan Island type of canvas sneakers-just my size. Sometimes picking up litter pays dividends in ways not expected.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Happy Fathers Day Dad.
Bernie
Litterwithastorytotell.blogspot.com