What’s likely to be your first destination during the summer months? Where do people usually swarm when the weather warms up? Beaches, rivers, and lakes - depending on where you live.
Most people love the feeling of sand between their toes, swimming, tanning, or having a picnic lunch with the family. However, when the crowds clear, that same love that brought people to their favorite watering hole doesn’t quite show by all the junk they leave behind. Trash is everywhere! Food scraps, plastic bags, plastic wrappers, cigarette butts, forgotten toys, dirty diapers, disposable cups, utensils, and the reigning champion of all trash -- single-use plastic beverage bottles. That trash arrives in our waterways directly from visitors but also overtime from littered streets where waste eventually ends up at the coast.
Why should we clean up beaches?
If you were to walk along a beach on a random summer day, what would you expect to see? Likely, birds eating through plastic wrappers, Styrofoam, the occasional Flamin’ Hot Cheetos® bag, pecking at abandoned single-use plastic bottles. As the sun sets, high tides sweep hot plastic trash into the ocean where it will be mistaken for food and eaten by sea animals.
Humans are technically animals too, and we are no exception to the plastics entering our diets from sea salt and seafood. Even the veggies we eat are grown in microplastic riddled soil. Whole ecosystems are being destroyed by our plastics which now blankets the oceans and collects in 5 major gyres around the world.
These plastics break down into smaller pieces called microplastics. Microplastics now permeate all ocean species who have no choice but to ingest plastic ridden ocean waters. There’s a real need for this vicious cycle to end, and that’s why people volunteer for beach cleanups. It’s a great way to keep waste that has ended up on our shores from further polluting the ocean and harming wildlife.
So you see, it’s vital that we take an active role in cleaning up our streets and beaches while manufacturers of plastics get their acts together to stop producing single-use garbage. According to the data collected from the Ocean Conservancy the biggest culprits of our beach include:
Top 10 Items Found at Beach Cleanups According to the Ocean Conservancy:
#1 CIGARETTE BUTTS 1,863,838
#2 PLASTIC BEVERAGE BOTTLES 1,578,834
#3 PLASTIC BOTTLE CAPS 822,227
#4 FOOD WRAPPERS 762,353
#5 PLASTIC GROCERY BAGS 520,900
#6 PLASTIC LIDS 419,380
#7 STRAWS, STIRRERS 409,087
#8 GLASS BEVERAGE BOTTLES 390,468
#9 OTHER PLASTIC BAGS 368,655
#10 FOAM TAKEAWAY CONTAINERS 365,584
PATHWATER’s mission for beach & street cleanups
It’s the right thing to do! In addition to the reasons above, the founders of PATHWATER have taken on the mission to sponsor and participate in beach cleanups because it’s imperative to the bigger picture - solving our plastics crisis. Our team at PATHWATER goes beyond selling a reusable bottled water solution to plastic pollution. We get our hands dirty by cleaning up plastic messes to prevent it from ending up in the ocean.
Our Impact:
- We've done approximately 30 Beach Cleanups.
- We're partnered with Plastic Tides and also donate to them.
- We have picked up over 1,500 pounds of trash.
- Donated $10k
- Given 500 PATHWATER Bottles
Partnering for a Bigger Impact: PATHWATER teams with Plastic Tides & The Clean Mission for a cleanup revolution
We’re excited to announce our collaboration with Plastic Tides and The Clean Mission project to clean up streets and coastlines from Norcal down to Socal. Our streets need just as much help with getting cleaned up as our beaches. After all, if we leave trash in the streets, it eventually makes its way to the beach. But not on our watch!
We look forward to having fun and cleaning up California with our friends at Plastic Tides and The Clean Mission Project. And we are inviting you to join us! Head to our facebook events page for more details! >
So, you don’t live near? Can’t make it? We understand! We know you want to take action that makes an impact on our plastics crisis, so we’ve created another way for everyone to support these types of efforts. Help us STOP PLASTICS AT THE SOURCE: SIGN THE PETITION to disrupt the beverage industry’s biggest polluter - single-use PET plastic beverage bottles. SIGN NOW & JOIN A CLEANUP!
Resources:
https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-Ocean-Conservancy-ICC-Report.pdf
https://www.thecleanmission.com/events.html
https://www.facebook.com/pathwater/events
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/get-single-use-pet-plastics?source=c.em.cp&r_by=21353571