In 18 days it will be the 25th anniversary of the California Coastal Cleanup Day. If you need a reason to participate, conservationist J. Nichols gives us reason #1:
“Once I put a plastic bag into a jar of water and passed it around the university classroom where I was teaching and not one student identified it as a plastic bag. Point being, plastic bags in the ocean really can fool animals into eating them. That can be tragic for the animal. Some animals pass plastic along with all the other things they eat. But others choke and die or get so stopped up that they die slowly.”
We can do better as a society. I hope you can find the time each week to pick up a little trash from your beach, park, stream, or sidewalk.
My 4 year old son made me very proud this weekend. He picked up some plastic trash on the beach and threw in the garbage bins without my suggestion. I asked how he knew it was trash. He replied that broken stuff wasn’t supposed to be on the beach and “we don’t want the ocean to have our trash”. I wished adults learned from example as easy as kids. Elliot and I always remember our cloth bags when we do our grocery shopping now. We still have lots of plastic toys, but we purchase only wood and cloth toys whenever possible. Person by person, little by little, we can make a difference!
