Saturday, September 17
From the day we arrived in Berkeley I had been seeing signs everywhere inviting participation in a shoreline clean-up this Saturday. Riding along on the road we didn't think the beaches looked bad. (Most of the litter seemed to be blowing into the roadside grass.) However it looked from a distance, I was sure there'd be some beach trash to pick up if the city had set aside a day get those beaches clean.
On several occasions I have participated in beach clean-ups, especially on the Olympic Peninsula, hauling off fishing floats, crates, light bulbs, empty plastic bottles and so on. Knowing the amount of trash and the effects on wildlife I am sold on humans getting out to remove the result of thoughtless habits that pollute our shores. It seemed like a good way to help out the wildlife of the beautiful San Francisco Bay we have so enjoyed.
This morning I pedaled off to the meeting spot, a big dusty parking area at the base of the peninsula where the marina is located. It reminded me of an organized bike ride or run. Hoards of people, families, organized groups and individuals like me, marched in with gloves and buckets to the sign-in tables. Next we were oriented and assigned to specific areas.
Patty, a local park employee and coordinator of the event, showed us maps and spoke to us of the problems in Berkeley. Rivers like the Sacramento flow into the Bay creating a sort of mega estuary. Trash is washed downstream to the shallow water here where it accumulates on the beaches. From the ocean trash thrown overboard floats around in the Pacific gyre, blows through the Golden Gate and travels across to the Berkeley shore. Patty spoke of single use plastics and how citizens need to work on laws that reduce production and availablity of this stuff. We were told we would work in groups of three, designating one person who would record data. I learned that we were participating in a worldwide day for beach cleaning and that documenting the kinds of pollution in each location was part of the project.
A couple of nice ladies added me to their twosome and off we trundled to the Brickyard Cove beach on the backside of a giant manmade hill of dirt. They told me we were walking over an old dump. Our parks department leader sidled through blackberry bushes (runts in comparison with the ones Seattleites regularly battle) and down a steep slope to the beach.
While waiting for the line to move, I picked up a couple of pieces of plexiglas and a candy wrapper, nothing much there on the way down the trail. We wandered off along the berm looking out at the sandpipers and willets wading in the shallows and the chips of wood, sticks, leaves and seaweed marking the high tides. The tide was way out on this calm sunny morning.
When we chose a place to clean, I sat down on a log and really looked at the surface in front of me. It seemed impossible that so many pieces of plastic could be mixed into the natural components of any beach. The talk had not prepared me for what I saw. At my feet were hundreds of small pieces of man made materials, almost all plastic. (See how many you can count in the 1 square foot photo at the top.)
Soon we were tallying the trash. Thousands of drinking straws, plastic bottle caps, pieces of candy wrappers, brittle chips of plastic bottles, styrofoam, cigar tips, spent shotgun shells, and of course, plastic bags of all types. Could this be the future of the world, beaches where bare feet run on plastic? Never in all my beachcombing have I found anything like the volume of plastic on that beach. Even a few hundred people working hard for three hours could not rid this spot of the horrible plastic bits and almost none of it was recyclable.
It was very discouraging to see that when we left the beach still needed a lot more work. The bright side was the amazing mix of participants. This was all of Berkeley. Next to me were kids from Cal talking about their community service ideas. Students from the high school were kidding around and competing for weird stuff they found. Old people, black, hispanic, Asian. We were all there talking about how to stop this problem from continuing to wreck the beaches. Over and over I heard one woman say, "I'll never use a plastic drinking straw again."
The citizens of the world need a wakeup call for the impact of plastics on our environment. Today's experience sure shook me up.
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