Our Daily Ocean: Day 9

After yoga and a quick lunch, the family and I headed over to Wrightsville Beach to meet a reporter from Lumina News.  Our destination:

Access 37 is on the South side of Oceanic.

One thing that I don't think that I have ever mentioned--in these Our Daily Ocean posts-- is that I don't live at the beach.  In fact, it takes me about 20 minutes to get to Wrightsville Beach and that's if I don't get stuck at the 12 stoplights on the drive there.  BUT, you know... it doesn't really matter whether or not we live at the beach.  We go to the beach to be in the ocean... play in the sand... bask in the sun... there's certainly no reason why we (or anyone else) shouldn't want to head out to the beach and make a difference in a place we LOVE so much.

So.... I totally forgot my camera (Access photo taken with my cell phone) and I spent nearly all of 20 minutes talking to Jenny from Lumina News.    Good thing my husband came along with our 3 kids (which it turns out that 2 of them are pretty darn sick... kids will do amazing things to go to the beach!!).  So here's what we got:

This is my husband's bucket... he picked up litter for 20 minutes.

This is my bucket... I picked up for about 5 minutes :(

When we got home I decided since I didn't get any photos on the beach... that I should spread out what we cleaned up from Wrightsville Beach and take a "group" photo (I think I'll do this more often).  When I dumped out the buckets onto my front walkway, I was really surprised at how much there was.

THIS... is what was in our buckets:

Want to take a guess??  How many cigarette butts do YOU think are there??

20 minutes... that's all the time it took to pick up all that litter.  20 minutes makes a HUGE difference.  We all have 20 minutes...especially if we're just hanging out at the beach.  Just think if we all took 20 minutes... So I ask... why not??  Why not take 20 minutes???

WHY NOT join The Community Collection at The Daily Ocean?!?  

But hey, we all know that upstream impacts downstream... so you don't have to live by an ocean to have an impact on it... take 20 minutes wherever you are!!  You clean it... I'll post it.  20 minutes... that's it. 

20 minutes on September 10, 2010


Litter picked up by weight:  11.6 oz


Cigarette Butts:  646  (yes, this is the most... and I'm at a loss for words.)

Total amount of cigarette butts picked up off of Wrightsville Beach, NC in 9 days: 

2,937