As many of you know, you know, the beach is absolutely my happy place. I love to sit and listen to the waves and watch its beauty. But to keep it beautiful, you must keep it clean. When my neighbor made a Facebook post about participating in the Oak Island Beach Preservation clean up, I decided that I needed to join her and her girls. So, Saturday my husband, Tom, my neighbors, and I set out with our gloves and buckets to clean the beach.
It amazes me that people just leave their garbage wherever. I have always been the person who takes more off the beach than what I brought, and I don’t mean just sand!! If there is a wrapper or something along the way, I pick it up and throw it into my trash. But being there and paying attention to everything in the sand and picking it up was eye opening. I remember from days of doing street cleaning that there are always a lot of cigarette butts, but wow!! In one block of the beach, we picked up over 80 cigarette butts! That was just 3 adults and 2 children zig zagging the beach for an hour and a half. But that wasn’t all the trash we cleaned up, there were metal and plastic bottle caps, food wrappers, fishing wire and hooks, construction materials with nails, etc. In total over 9 pounds of trash in 1 block!
It wasn't all about clean up. I got to see first hand how the volunteer with the Oak Island Sea Turtle Protection Program protect the nest and make a path for the babies to go to the ocean. I have seen their work online but to see it in person is amazing.
To keep our world beautiful, we have to keep it clean. I urge you to participate in a clean up near you, whether it is beach or roadside. But seriously, is there a better place to do it than on the beach??
I am happy to do my part, please do yours!