This is a today & tomorrow story. It’s about you and your next trip to the beach…
- Get yourself to a beach. (Bring along an empty plastic bread bag.)
- Start picking up pieces of plastic once you start looking for treasures.
- Pick up plastic bottles too.
- Bring it all home with you.
- Optional: Rinse the sand off your plastic and out of the bottle(s).
- Let everything dry for a day or so.
- Put as much plastic as you can into the bottle.
- Download the specimen tag below, fill it out, and attach it to your bottle.
- Take a photo of your bottle and email it to me. (I’ll post it in the Day at the Beach gallery.)
- Keep your bottle on your coffee table or on a shelf. When your friends and family ask you about it, tell them this story. Tell them how easy it was to collect that much plastic. Direct them to tpo10.org to learn more.
- Repeat.
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The Back Story
The Back Story
While combing the beaches of Kauai last winter I quickly lost interest in shells and found myself dazzled by the enormous selection of beach plastic.
The first day I picked up a pocketful in about 10 minutes. The next day I filled up a plastic quart container.
The third day I filled a bread bag and picked up a single use juice bottle, a single use liter bottle, and half a wheelbarrow.
By this time beach plastic had become the main focus for me and my wife, Jude, as soon as we hit the sand. The more we looked, the more we saw: plastic, bottles, giant tangles of nylon rope and styrofoam and more. We couldn’t carry it all.
The problem is, we know where all that plastic is going to end up. If you read
The Trouble with Plastic you do too.
Towards the end of my trip I started shoving the smaller pieces of plastic into the drink bottle to recycle it. When I finished, I liked the way it looked. It also seemed too important to leave in Hawaii. I brought it home to help me tell this story, A Day at the Beach.
A Day at the Beach is a today and tomorrow story. It’s about you and your next trip to the beach. When you get to your favorite old beach, or a new one, start your stroll along the shoreline. Enjoy the waves, the sun, the warm sand, and your company if you’re not there alone.
After you have enjoyed the magic for a while, start looking for treasure. Plastic. Odds are, once you start noticing it, you will see more and more of it. Start collecting it. Make sure to find a few bottles too. If you don’t find one along the water, you probably will on your way back to your car.
Take everything home with you. Rinse your plastic off in a bowl or bucket. (One thing you’ll notice is that more than 90% of it floats. That’s how it all ends up out there in the middle of the Pacific.) Rinse out your bottle(s) and let everything dry out for a day or two.
Start putting the pieces of plastic you’ve collected in the single use plastic bottle you found. Shake the bottle as you’re filling it so you can pack more in.
When you’re done, download the label above, fill it out, put a string through the hole, put the ends of string into the bottle and put it on your coffee table.
When your friends and family ask you about it, tell them this story. Tell them how frighteningly easy it was to collect that much plastic. Direct them to tpo10.org to learn more.
Take a photo of your bottle and email it to me. (I’ll post it in the Day at the Beach gallery.)
Hi, I participated in a beach clean up lead by Harmony Hotel where I manage the hotel shop and like you, I was amazed at the quantity of small pieces of plastic on the high tide line. Instead of trying to find the largest plastic trash I could, I focused on the small pieces and placed them in a discarded plastic bottle as I went. This inspired me to create an activity for our guests at the hotel as well as the staff to do the same and earn a free desert or smoothie when they return the filled bottle. We are collecting the bottles in the shop for a future project. I would love to share some images of our bottles with you if you could please give me an email address. Thank much. I love that you are doing this!
Thank you Lee, for your wonderful comment and for what you’re doing in beautiful Costa Rica.
I travel to Kauai each year. On our last trip, we went to a less popular, non-monitored beach. I was very saddened by the amount of plastic that I was coming across. The next time we go, I’m planning to take a tote to fill up with the garbage. People don’t realize how far their trash can travel. If we don’t try to remedy it, who will? Thank you for this interesting way to clean up the beach while also bringing awareness to the problem!