Our Daily Ocean: Day 126

Friday afternoon, my husband and I went to Wrightsville Beach.  Because it was such a gorgeous day, I made the decision that I wanted to go to Johnnie Mercer's Pier.  I often have mixed feelings about that particular area at WB, because it is no doubt part of the trashiest area on the beach strand.  My mixed feelings come from it being a place where I can easily show the lack of responsibility people take and just how disrespectful some people are.... but... as much as this is good to teach awareness, it just gets overwhelming and frustrating sometimes.  Case in point:

Because there was so much trash in just this one area, my husband decided to drag the trash can down and pick it all up.  (Yes, part of our 20 minutes was taken to clean up that mess and I didn't add it to the tally.)  SO... as we saw that big mess strewn across the sand... we questioned why the people couldn't just walk the trash up to the trash cans??  BUT... then we raised a bigger question.  If people that litter THAT much trash and aren't caught and/or cited... then how in the world do the three Wrightsville Beach aldermen that voted down the proposed smoking ban expect someone who litters something as small as a cigarette butt to be cited for littering??  I ask that question in all seriousness.  I wonder from a police officer's point of view how difficult that task must be??  

It sounds daunting if not impossible.  Though I would be the first to say that I believe that anything is possible.  BUT, with a small police force at WB... I wonder about the feasibility of police officers being able to truly enforce the littering law... especially when it comes to cigarette butts?  Hmmm... Since the public hearing we have done 3 clean ups at Wrightsville Beach.  My friend Sara has done 4 beach clean ups in Santa Monica.  We're comparing the amount of cigarettes found on our two beaches in just 20 minute increments.  So far the difference is staggering.  We ask, "Can you tell which beach has banned smoking?"

Wrigthsville Beach: 3 beach clean ups-- 781 cigarette butts

Santa Monica: 4 beach clean ups-- 57 cigarette butts

Another thing that happened yesterday, was us seeing a group of people pack up their stuff and leave their trash. (See the people standing just to the right of the access sign?  Yeah, that's them.)  They grabbed all their chairs, towels, etc... but failed to grab 2 plastic water bottles and 2 freshly smoked cigarettes.  When my husband approached them to let them know that they forgot some things, he received a common response: "Oh, we were going to come back for that." (RIGHT, because those water bottles and cigarette butts are so important they'd never be forgotten.)  Please note the sarcasm... because as often as we've heard that line (along with the "that's not ours" line)... no one ever packs up everything... walks all the way to the access and goes back for their cigarette butts or other trash.  By the way, as the conversation progressed... her story changed to place the blame on the young teenager that was with them.  (sad)

I'm here to make a difference.  Want to join in?

20 minutes on March 16, 2012 at Access 15

Litter by weight: 1 lb 12 oz

Cigarette butts: 210

Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 126 days:

42,033

Responsibility Is Not Convenient

After doing our 81st clean up at Access 16, we headed further down the beach to Access 39 so that my husband could stand up paddle board.  When we walked up the access I saw this overflowing trashcan that normally would have made me so frustrated...

Even though trash was falling and blowing out all over the beach, I wasn't frustrated because I knew that  I could fix this problem.  I said to my husband,

"I'm not leaving it like this... I'm going to get a trashcan."  

Hoping to find a near empty trashcan... I walked to the next access and then to the next... both trashcans were half full.  I hesitated and thought to myself... "What am I doing?? ... I don't know if I can do this... wait, I have to do this.  Responsibility is NOT convenient."  I made the decision to choose the closer of the two and I drug it across the beach...

In the midst of dragging the trashcan, I called my friend Ginger to let her know that I had officially lost it.  Dragging the awkward, sticky, ant infested trashcan across the beach wasn't easy... but this is the way I saw it:  There was a problem that needed to be fixed.  Do I wish that people would have taken their trash with them instead of leaving it on the beach??  Absolutely.  But they didn't.  I can't change that.  I can't change what happened before me... I can only hope to change what happens after me.

 Responsibility is not convenient.  Doing the right thing takes extra effort... but trust me... it's always worth it. :)

Our Daily Ocean: Day 79

Back in the fall of 2010, we made the decision to adopt a beach access at Wrightsville Beach.  Deciding on an access was serious business for us because we wanted to make sure that we adopted an access that really needed it.  And so, with a large parking lot and bathrooms... we made the decision and adopted access 36.

Adopting access 36 has been difficult for us.  Because it's our adopted access, we go there more often than other accesses even when we're not documenting our 20 minute clean ups.  Sometimes I question whether or not we should have adopted a different access... maybe 24?? (Not to worry, my friend Gabby adopted access 24 shortly after we adopted our access ;) )  ....my questioning of our decision doesn't come out of the fact that it's a high traffic access point.  Nope, my questioning of our decision to adopt access 36 only comes out of my frustrations with Oceanic restaurant.  

Doing back to back clean ups at 36, only intensified my frustrations with the ocean front restaurant.  On Sunday, 29 of the 36 straws we picked up came from the Oceanic dining pier.  And on Monday, 16 of the 21 straws I picked up came from their dining pier.  Fact: There is always a nice wind on Wrightsville Beach, straws (and other things) are guaranteed to blow off the pier.  Knowing this fact, Oceanic needs to take responsibility.  

On Sunday, after seeing the Oceanic employee break area completely littered with cigarettes... I made the decision to skip cleaning their mess.  I had really hoped that Monday morning they would send someone out to clean up the grasses (always littered with restaurant litter) and pick up the cigarette butts.  But when I returned on Monday to see an empty pack of cigarettes laying in the exact spot it was Sunday... I started picking up... and counting.  In just a small (maybe) 10 foot area, I removed 99 cigarette butts.  What bothers me most about this is that those same people who are employed by Oceanic and leaving their cigarette butts in their "break area" no doubt litter their cigarette butts in other places, too.  Oceanic has a great opportunity to educate their employees about the effects of cigarette litter in our environment...

So... this blog is not a place where I mindlessly rant about the shit that bugs me.  Ranting is pointless unless I'm willing to do something about it.  Last fall, I contacted Oceanic about all of the littered cigarette butts in the employee break area and was assured by the general manager that the problem would be taken care of.  I've written Oceanic about straws on numerous occasions.  I get it, I am that girl.  Maybe it's easy to dismiss one person??  Here's what I'm learning: just me writing Oceanic is not enough.  Hundreds of people need to write Oceanic.  A call to action if you will.

Here's the truth: We did not adopt access 36 to clean up after Oceanic.  We adopted access 36 because it is a high traffic area that needed to be adopted.... but yet, we spend the majority of our time cleaning up after Oceanic.  Wrightsville Beach is Oceanic's backyard... plain and simple: they need to take care of it. 

...and so I remind myself that adopting Access 36 was the right thing to do.  Bringing awareness to a problem is the only way to change it.  

20 minutes on July 11, 2011 at Access 36

Litter by weight: 2 lbs

Cigarette butts: 287

Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 79 days:

23,918

A Vacation

It's been three weeks now since we packed our bags and then headed out the door for our California vacation. No doubt, traveling is hard on the environment... all the fuel needed to get our family of 5 across the country makes me feel all guilty.   And believe me...as much as I would love to take a different route--like drive in lieu of flying--quite frankly, driving 1000 miles is my maximum right now ;))

Just like I am always thinking and acting on how we can minimize our impact on the environment everyday...  it only makes sense that we do the same while traveling. 

SO... we started off our trip with our 6 (empty) water bottles, two coffee (in my case, tea) mugs and some homemade granola bars for the LONG flight to Los Angeles.

Our water bottles are well traveled and our pockets are well lined because of it. As we visited so many different places along the SoCal coast... we could only imagine the money that we would've spent on bottled water (or flavored drinks) if we hadn't brought our own.  They've been everywhere we've been...

3 different airports, on a ride down the coast from LA to San Diego (and back again), Oceanside, El Cajon, San Diego Wild Animal Park, The Midway, San Diego Maritime Museum, Balboa Park (San Diego), a Bushwalla and Dawn Mitschele show, Legoland (2x!), strawberry picking in Carlsbad, Corona del Mar, Santa Monica (2x!), Disneyland, a couple of beaches and everywhere in between! 

Seriously, anyone who ever says that they can't afford to buy a reusable water bottle hasn't done the math... I'd venture to say that had we not brought our own reusable water bottles that we would have easily spent hundreds of dollars on bottled water. How do I figure? Well, between a family of 5 we easily drink at least 6 (big) bottles of water a day-- if not more-- while we're out and about.  Airports and places of interest charge out the wazoo for bottled water... most I saw were $2.75 each. We were traveling for 11 days...

Really though, we don't choose not to buy bottled water because we're frugal... we don't buy it because it's more than just a waste of money.... bottled water is a waste of resources.  The companies that produce bottled water do so at an environmental cost to the communities that they extract the water from... and as I learned from Sara of The Daily Ocean... "if you fill a plastic bottle about 1/4th of the way up with petroleum... that is approximately how much petroleum needed to make that one plastic bottle."  With the man-made disaster in the Gulf of Mexico... that's a visual that we all need to start thinking about when we see plastic bottles.

Speaking of Sara, we met up with her in Santa Monica to participate in doing a 20 minute beach clean-up.  For 20 minutes, we talked and walked... and as we walked we picked up litter off the beach.  Read about the time we spent with Sara and how much trash we picked up in a very leisurely 20 minutes: http://thedailyocean.blogspot.com/2010/07/day-130-july-16-2010.html

Of course, our litter picking up didn't start or end in Santa Monica with Sara.  (Sure, I know that we were on vacation... but it doesn't take much time to bend over, pick up and put the trash where it belongs.) We picked up litter everywhere we went... Oceanside, Corona del Mar beaches, and ALL of the places we walked.   Unfortunately, we could never get it all... but picking up one piece of litter is better than doing nothing at all.  (Please take that phrase and insert any impact that you have doubt about... like this: " ___________ is better than doing nothing at all."

 Which as I'm typing I realize that I've gone on an unexpected tangent... but here were are.  And now I'm thinking about starfish...

"A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

 

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t possibly save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

 

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,

 

“Well, I made a difference to that one!”

 

The old man looked at the girl inquisitively and thought about what she had done and said. Inspired, he joined the little girl in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined...."

 

Just imagine the possibilities :)

 

Doing SOMETHING is still SOMETHING... 

and it ALL matters.

What's SO Different??

Yesterday, we made our first trip of the summer year to Figure 8 Island. Figure 8 is our beach... although it's a private island... we can get to it by boat. We park our boat on the channel side of the island that runs parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. It's absolutely beautiful... the green of the marsh grass against the blue ocean... the water birds and other wildlife that live there... is breathtaking.

(My daughter, my friend Dawn and her son Dean)

As always when we go to the beach, we take a bag to pick up litter and marine debris that has washed up on the beach. In the past, we've mainly picked up things like this:

When we started our walk. I picked up a few pieces of plastic (not surprising... plastic is everywhere) and an aerosol can of bug spray... then I noticed quickly that there were no cigarette butts (obviously, from the lack of people visiting the island during the off-season... unfortunately, I know that soon will change). After walking a few minutes, we reached the point where the beach comes to an end at the edge of the marsh... where sea birds, hermit crabs, blue crabs and tiny snails amongst other things like to hang out.

One of the places that I check the most often for trash washed up on the beach is right at the surf line. I leaned over to pick up a piece of plastic that was at the surf line... I pulled and my heart sank... because at that moment I realized that plastic was entangled in all of the sea plants that had washed up on the beach.  The plastic wasn't new... it was dried out and looked melted.  It was so bad that we couldn't even untangle it... when we tried, the plastic just broke into smaller pieces... SO... we basically collected everything that was at the surf line for about 50 feet... I kneeled scooping and folding all the plastic that I could... we filled our litter bag and had to get another bag... all this in 15 minutes. :(

What's in the bags??  THIS.....

Yes, it was a huge pile...full of plastics, glass, cans, Stryofoam, etc... I could've spread it out... but with all the plastic... the wind would have surely carried some away... SO... check out the detail:

(had to pull out some marsh grass because the plastic had adhered to it.)

I know... it looks like I took many of the pictures right at the beach... and it should... because I took a good portion of the beach with me.  It really saddens me that some people can be so careless... so irresponsible. 

   SO... I ask you... what is the difference between what I cleaned up at my beach and THIS??

or between THIS:

A bird wrapped in plastic

and this??

a bird covered in oil

The thing is... there really isn't much of a difference.  Plastics are made from oil.  AND if you're saddened or if you're mad about the oil spill that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and the detrimental effect it is having on our environment and those we share it with... THEN... now is the time to make the connection between oil and plastics.

The Plastic Ocean: Black Liquid Plastic is Spilling into OUR Ocean

By the way,  I'm planning on contacting Figure 8 Island to make them aware of what we removed from their beach... 

A Day at the Park

A week ago, I took my kids to the park.  We hadn't been to this particular park since last summer and I was pleasantly surprised at how different it was.  First of all, the port-a-potties had been replaced with actual restroom facilities.  YAY!  And, there were several large recycle bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans.  One problem... as we walked up... I saw the trash can was overflowing with plastic bottles.

The sight immediately made me think about my daughter's field trip a few days earlier when I was throwing away a piece of trash...one of my daughter's teachers said, "Don't look in the trash."  She knows me... she knows that I would have serious issues with what I saw-- plastic bottles in the trash.  I said, "I don't know why it bothers me so much.  Why I just can't let it go."  (I'm constantly apologizing for things like this.  But my daughter's teachers... awesome that they are...told me that I have inspired them... way to make a girl feel good and way to make a girl Rethink apologizing for wanting to make a difference ;).)

Anyway... back to the overflowing trash can at the park.  As we were walking up, there were people leaving... so I walked past the trash can.  I waited for the people to be on their way...and while I waited I picked up some litter.  Here's one of many pieces I picked up around the playground.

Then, once they headed to the parking lot... I made my move.  I grabbed the recycle bin-- that was only a couple of steps away from the trash can-- and pulled it closer and took off the lid.  Then a friend arrived with her kids and my oldest son in tow.  I went to apologize for digging through the trash... but then said, "This is what I do." :)  My friend stood and talked to me as I pulled every bottle and can out of the trash... even found bags of bottles!!  Yes... there were moments when it was all a little gross... especially the can with cigarette ashes all over it. YUCK!

When I was done... by done, I mean... got every bottle/can that I could see...I put the bins back and THOROUGHLY washed my hands. ;)

Earth Hour

In 2007, 2.2 million homes and businesses in Sydney, Australia turned out their lights to make a stand against climate change by creating the first Earth Hour.  3 years later, Earth Hour is a global call to action to every individual (that's you ;) ), every business, and every community to stand up.... to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way to a sustainable future.  

Getting involved is easy.  

On March 27, 2010 at 8:30 (wherever you live)... turn out your lights... for ONE HOUR.

What will I be doing??  Hmmm... don't really have any major plans except to turn off the lights and shut down the computer... light some candles (yes, they're soy based) and play some games-- to be determined :)  

Also, thinking of Earth Hours instead of Hour.

Update:

After the lights were out and the candles were lit... we decided to play "Scrabble"... I can't remember the last time I played... making up words is SO much fun... however, next time we play I'm not backing down on using words such as "ringeth" :)

Think Outside the Bottle

Remember back in the day when buying bottled water was the "it" thing to do? I used to be a soda junky (Mr. Pibb was my weakness). When bottled water came out... I happily started buying it. Of course, the lover of all things French that I am... I was an Evian drinker. I was completely convinced that water packaged fresh from the French Alps just tasted better. Besides, carrying a bottle of Evian just made me feel healthy and sophisticated... well as sophisticated as a high schooler could possibly feel ;)

Sit tight... I have a feeling I could get long winded ;)

I bought bottled water well into my twenties. In fact, I only made the decision a little over 2 years ago to stop buying it completely. The reasons why I decided to stop buying bottled water came from various places. The first thought I had about it all came from my loathing of Kimberly-Clark. I got an email from GreenPeace that urged me to vote for Kimberly-Clark in Corporate Accountability International's Hall of Shame to cast light on their corporate abuse. I did. It was there that I noticed their campaign "Think Outside the Bottle". I was immediately curious and started reading.

I took the pledge to "Think Outside the Bottle" and stop buying bottled water.  Because:

• Water is a human right and not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit;
• Bottled water corporations are changing the way people think about water and undermining people's confidence in public water systems;
• Up to 40% of bottled water in the US and Canada is sourced from public tap water;
• Some bottlers have run over communities' concerns and the environment when they extract water and build bottling plants to get local spring and ground water;
• Bottled water travels many miles from the source, results in the burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels, and contributes to the billions of plastic bottles ending up in landfills;
• Worldwide there is a need for investments in public water systems to ensure EQUAL access to water-- a key ingredient for prosperity and health for ALL people, and
• Solutions to ensuring water as a fundamental human right require people acting together and standing up for public water systems.

Another reason that I choose reusable water bottles:

Caps/lids and plastic beverage bottles are numbers 4 and 5 of the most commonly found marine debris items in the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Clean-up.

Deciding to make a commitment to something is easy... standing strong with a commitment takes time, perseverance, and belief that it CAN be done. I believe in not buying bottled water. When we go on road trips I fill up nearly every water bottle we own (depending, of course, how long the trip is). If... by chance... our bottles run dry... it's easy (and free) to fill up at a water fountain or press the water tab on a soda fountain machine.

In the US, 2 million plastic water bottles are used every 5 minutes.

I contribute zero.