Saturday morning, we woke up early and headed to Wrightsville Beach to set up the
Surfrider Spring Beach Sweep at Wrightsville Beach. If you didn't know, my husband and I both volunteer with Cape Fear Surfrider... it's something that we really enjoy doing because we get to connect with a community of people who are taking an active role in protecting and caring for our beaches. I always encourage everyone to learn more about the work
Surfrider Foundation does to protect our oceans, waves and beaches for now and tomorrow... and wherever you are (
and whether you're a surfer or not) to definitely get involved with this awesome awesome organization!
As the sweep started, I decided to do a 20 minute beach clean up. Normally, I don't do our beach clean ups in the morning, but since I was already there... it only made sense! So I set off following fairly far behind WB Mayor Cignotti, who was volunteering during the Surfrider clean up. I thought since someone was already picking up ahead of me that there wouldn't be too much to pick up. Wrong.
In 20 minutes, I picked up 212 cigarette butts. When Mayor Cignotti finished, he had picked up 211! Two other Surfrider volunteers counted a whopping 457 cigarette butts that they found on WB! I've added those two counts to the community count on the sidebar, which pushes the community count for WB to: 11,561!!
Not surprising: Cigarette butts were by far the most found littered item during the Surfrider clean up.
Since today is Earth Day, I was really hoping to do another 20 minute beach clean up.... but it just didn't happen. Much needed rain and an opportunity to sit down with a friend and talk about some important issues facing our area... meant that a beach clean up could wait until another day. Besides, in my world... everyday really is Earth Day. :)
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
~George Bernard Shaw
Happy Earth Day today and everyday!
20 minutes on April 21, 2012 at Access 29
Cigarette butts: 212
Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 134 days:
44,423
Great Stuff. I love reading your blog. I clean beaches in and around my home town of Falmouth, in Cornwall, UK. I find all sorts of stuff - fishing line, netting fragments, plastic bottle and bottle fragments, crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers and loads of bits of unidentifiable plastic. But I rarely find cigarette butts, and when I do it will be just a few. They are all over the sidewalk in Falmouth, but not on the beaches. I wonder why so many where you are and so few here?
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe there are so many cigarette butts on the beach. I refuse to believe it....
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job!
cleaningbeaches-- Thank you :) I'm not really sure the reason why there are SO many more littered cigarette butts on my beach versus other beaches like yours. Our beach gets a pretty good amount of "traffic"... a lot of visitors! Are there more smokers here than in Cornwall? Education level about the issue? There are so many factors that are unknown because (I think) it just hasn't been studied. I find all the same stuff you find...just with an overabundance of cigarette butts. Also, one thing that we don't get here is plastics washing up from another source. All of the litter at Wrightsville Beach is completely localized. The positive with that is that since the problem is coming directly from the actions of people visiting the beach, we can begin to fix that! (...and since we know the most littered item we can focus the efforts on that one particular item!) :)
ReplyDeleteSonya-- I can honestly say that if I had not started this project... and spent the time picking all those cig butts up... I myself wouldn't believe it! (in fact, sometimes, I still shake my head in disbelief) It's crazy!!