Last Saturday morning, I awoke early to make my way to North Avenue Beach in Chicago.  I was not there to play volleyball.  I was not there to fail at volleyball, either (I once was working on overhand serving and managed to hit my ball directly at the head of a guy putting a net up next to ours.  Three times in a row!).

I also was not there to stare at a crush of mine, although that happened.  I had no idea she was joining in the fun until I arrived.  Bonus!

I went to the beach, actually, to participate in a beach cleanup effort, organized by the Alliance for the Great Lakes.  I am not a janitor by trade and typically I would not have found picking up garbage out of sand and seaweed a great fun, but my increasing awareness of the hazards posed by water- and land-borne litter made this a fun activity.  The giant omelet and apple pancake afterward helped, too!  Plus the presence of a crush.

Almost needless to say, we made this a social function as well and you could almost forget that you were wearing rubber gloves, picking up discarded cigarette butts and glass fragments because you were with friends.  But what the results were suprising and brought the reality of the event back into focus.  I will share some, but first, consider that my group of four picked up about 800 cigarette butts in just three hours!

Totals:

135 volunteers

203 pounds collected

78 plastic beverage bottles

121 glass beverage containers

126 beverage cans

125 cups, plastes, forks, knives, spoons

341 food wrappers

71 toys

12 crates

2 pallets

13 batteries

8 car parts

8545 cigarettes

WOW!  That was not the entire list, but just to give you an idea of some of the junk found on one beach!

Why is this type of work so important?  Well, beside the facts that this garbage makes a beach both unsightly and unsafe, it can contribute to degraded environmental conditions for plants and wildlife.  Plastic can be so harmful for fish and birds that eat it.

For more information regarding the dangers of garbage being tossed into our beaches and waterways, check out this news story and Wikipedia Entry:

Sea of Trash

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I encourage readers to partake in some type of garbage cleanup activity where they live, because our collective efforts to keep garbage out of waterways can and will help alleviate this situation.  In the end, it may take toughter regulations and stiff penalties to get people to stop littering.

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