Bluesday Tip #4: Stash the Trash

Today is Bluesday!

On the first Tuesday of each month, I share a tip for How To Be Blue. Being blue is about caring for the ocean - what we put into it, and what we take out of it.

This month's Bluesday tip: Stash the Trash.

Memorial Day weekend was the unofficial start of summer in the United States (thank you to the brave men and women who serve and protect our country and our freedom).

Summertime brings with it a huge influx of travelers to the beach. Some of us may have spent this past holiday weekend at the beach. Many of us will vacation on the coast during the course of the summer and throughout the year. Many of us live at or near a beach.

Regardless of when we go to the beach, one thing is bound to happen to almost all of us…trash.

Whether a sandwich wrapper or a cigarette butt, a plastic straw or a beer bottle, we will generate some sort of trash while we’re at the beach. And if we leave that trash on the beach, it will end up in the ocean. So what matters most is what we do with the trash.

That’s where this month’s Bluesday tip comes in handy.

Just stash the trash.

This should be an easy one for all of us. Simply stuff the trash in a bag or a cup or a shoe or a chair until it’s time to leave the beach. Then dispose of the trash in the nearest trash can or recycling bin.

That’s it.

But I challenge all of us to take it one step further…

Pick up trash we find on the beach even when it isn’t our trash.

Gasp!

Why should we do that?

Well, here’s the thing, garbage on the beach usually ends up as garbage in the ocean. The tide moves in, sucks up the trash, and rolls back out with it. Ocean currents then move much of the trash to a number of areas where the currents meet. The collections of trash in the crossroads of currents are called marine trash islands.

The most well known marine trash island is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (aka the Eastern Garbage Patch) located between Hawaii and California. The exact size of the patch is not known, but is estimated to be somewhere between the size of Texas and the size of the continental United States (yikes!). It is constantly growing. The Atlantic Ocean has a marine trash island as well in its Sargasso Sea.

Ninety percent of the trash found in the garbage patches is plastic, of which eighty percent comes from land sources (like – you guessed it - beaches). Trash such as water bottles, straws, cups, bottle caps, plastic bags, fish netting, and six-pack rings are a few of the types of items found floating in marine trash islands.

Giant garbage patches pose many dangers for ocean wildlife. Whales, seabirds, sea turtles, and other animals can easily become tangled in nylon nets and six-pack rings or choke on balloons, straws, and sandwich wrap. Fish, seabirds, jellyfish, and oceanic filter feeders mistake brightly colored plastic pellets for fish eggs and krill. The plastic pellets become toxic in large quantities and can lead to genetic defects that ripple through the food chain.

[Bonus Tip: Before throwing a six-pack ring in the trash (or recycling) bin, cut apart each of the rings to prevent strangulation of sea birds and turtles should the rings end up in the ocean.]

We enjoy spending time at the beach, so we must care about the only thing that makes a beach a beach – the ocean. If we care about the ocean, then we care about what we put into the ocean that might harm it or the sea creatures that call it home.

Even if you’re not a beach person, the ocean plays a much larger role in your inland life than you may realize.

No ocean, no humans. So we should all care about the ocean.

Besides, I don’t hear about anyone running off to vacation at marine trash islands. Who likes to hang out on a heap of trash?

And none of us want to contribute to the growth of marine trash islands. We really don’t.

That’s why we should do something.

Trash is trash is trash. Once it’s on the beach – no matter who put it there - it’s on its way to the marine trash islands. We can show how much we care about the ocean by picking up any trash we see on the beach – our own trash and that of the billions of people who don’t know about this month’s Bluesday tip because they don’t read my blog (*smile*).

Be a blue beachgoer. Stash the Trash.

The ocean and marine creatures will thank you!

May you turn a deeper shade of blue with each passing month.