International Beach Clean Up Day! September 20th, 2008

This morning I woke up as usual around 8am, made a big breakfast of french toast, a fruit smoothie and coffee, and then headed out with Alissa and Peter to clean up a beach.  I was expecting a beach, with some trash around on it.  What we found was very shocking and very overwhelming.  

Santo Domingo a sea front city boasts the malecon which is basically an area that follows the sea front like a board walk.  This area is popular with young people who like to go out; there are some sea side restaurants, a casino, a mall and some high rise apartment buildings along the stretch.  I have driven along the malecon a few times and noticed the beautiful expanse of sea waters and tall palms reaching out for more sun.  The beaches are not really noticeable from the road because the coast line is rocky and well from the road it just sort of drops off to the sea. 

Today when we showed up for the beach cleanup I was absolutely stunned.  The expanse of "beach" to me looked like an expanse of landfill.  From the waters edge to about 20ft inland was continuous trash.  Take a wild guess what the most prevalent substance was........ STYROFOAM.  Millions of pieces of shredded styrofoam absolutely covered the sand, were tangled in the sticks and natural debris.  I don't even know exactly what words to use to describe this... hypodermic needles, sandals, shoes, dolls, tooth brushes, pens, bottles, combs, plastic utensils, wax coated juice/milk containers .... were piled up by the thousands.  

The Ocean Conservancy sponsored this international volunteer effort for cleanup and here in Santo Domingo there was an excellent turnout.  Many people walked along the beach collecting bags of trash while more inventoried the findings for the conservancy.  This trash lies on the coast of a country, yet its origin is entirely unknown.  It is so easy to shrug off any responsibility to a problem like this, one so far from our own "home".  But the reality is that trash and other pollution does not know political boundaries.  There are some beaches here in the south west that have literally Mountains of trash on them because of the way that the water currents work.  

I pictured the ocean like a pool or a hot tub and these little islands are acting like the floating filter that moves around collecting debris.  More disturbing is something called the "trash vortex" which is a collection of plastic debris twice the size of Texas located in the Pacific Ocean.  Winds have caused all debris to collect in one are and the "trash island" is said to be about 30ft deep with all types of debris.  Go ahead and look it up online there are many resources confirming this problem.  It is safe to say that each and every one of us is responsible in some way for this and many other global problems.  

It is hard to imagine such a tangible problem and even more difficult is wondering how to ever reverse the impact of our actions.  What a day.