Did you know that Monday, June 8 is World Oceans Day? As we head into summer, which often means spending time at the beach, I have a challenge for us. How much garbage can we prevent from ending up on our beaches, in our oceans, and in other waterways?
I’m a rising senior at PHS and I have a summer challenge that is related to my Girl Scout Gold Award Project. I’m a sailor and sailing instructor, and I spend a ton of time on the water thinking about our oceans. Many of us are familiar with California Coastal Cleanup Day, which will be September 19 this year.
Beach cleanups like this and other less well-known beach and waterway cleanups are incredibly important for helping clean up coastal garbage. Ocean and beach garbage is a huge problem – millions of tons of plastic and garbage enter our marine ecosystems every year. But wouldn’t it be great if we could prevent garbage from ending up there in the first place? What if we focused more attention on making sure that trashcans at beaches and waterways aren’t allowed to overflow? When trashcans overflow, lightweight plastics – bags, wrappers, cups and straws – get blown into the water and end up in the ocean and surrounding ecosystems.
Preventing trashcan overflow may not seem like an important solution at first, but it is one of the most immediate and impactful solutions that individual citizens can contribute to and have control over. Permanent solutions to the overflowing trashcan issue is going to be slow and complicated, because it will require coordination between local governments, parks, and community organizations to increase the frequency of trash collection or expand the number, size, or design of trashcans at popular, highly-used coastal areas.
While I’m working on making that happen, there is a much simpler, immediate solution that each one of us can undertake. We can pledge to bring our own trash home with us from each beach outing. Each piece of plastic or garbage that is properly contained in a home trashcan is a piece of garbage that doesn’t get blown into our oceans, doesn’t enter the food chain of marine life, doesn’t wash up on shore, and doesn’t break down into the microplastics that are found in our oceans.
I hope you will join me for an early celebration of World Oceans Day by signing up for my Ocean Garbage Prevention Challenge, and pledge to take action – either by helping prevent garbage from ending up in our oceans, or by helping clean it up once it’s there.
Please spread the word! If we can prevent more garbage from entering our oceans, we will have even less garbage to collect on California Coastal Cleanup Day on September 19.