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Writer's pictureRachael Delekta

Fill the Void

What quote am I vibing? "Every child has inside him an aching void for excitement and if we don't fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and good for him, he will fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and which isn't good for him." Theodore Roosevelt

Pounds of Trash Removed from the Wild This Week / All Time: 20 / 60


I was going to wait until after a FWC project tomorrow to do a blog post, but I wanted to make one strictly about trash pickup since I had an interesting weekend.


Yesterday, I spent an hour and 20 minutes at Bathtub Reef Beach picking up trash. This is a particularly good beach for trash pickup because it is full of seaweed clumps, especially near the houses and rocks a bit north of the entrance. In that time, I found 108 plastic bottle caps, and a total of 4 pounds of (mostly little tiny plastic) trash.


I decided to do a repeat performance today as an experiment to see if a lasting impact was made by yesterday's work. Today I spent the same amount of time, at the same pace, in the same stretch of beach and found only 61 bottle caps and 2 pounds total. Of note, I had to dig a little deeper in the seaweed and the plastic pieces I retrieved were tinier, overall.


Conclusion: an impact may have been made. I would love to go after tomorrow's adventure for a third day of data. I have to admit, it did feel good that the beach seemed a little cleaner, even though it is clear that plastic constantly washes ashore.


Best moment: a little boy approached with his family and said "what are you doing?" "Cleaning up trash! Did you know there was this much trash on the beach?" They all seemed rather uninterested but the mom thanked me for what I was doing. 15 minutes later, a shadow crossed over me as I was crouched down - the little boy wordlessly poured two tiny handfuls of plastic into my bucket. I thanked him and actually got super emotional after he ran away. It is he that will have to deal with the consequences if we can't get this problem under control. I was so proud that he seemed to "get it."


Trash Pick Up this Week

Wednesday: 14 pounds at Seabranch

Saturday: 4 pounds at Bathtub

Sunday: 2 pounds at Bathtub








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