Jetsam and Flotsam
This little post is subtitled "Where Do All the Plastic Caps Come From?" There, I've asked the question. If you know the answer, at least regarding Miami-Dade County, please leave a comment!
In all the years I spent in Brazil I almost never went to the beach. The one exception was Fernando de Noronha. The reason being that I got completely spoiled by numerous diving and beach-bumming vacations on the British Virgin Islands. I hated the beaches in Rio; way too crowded and littered for my taste and, lately, much too chaotic and noisy. Thanks to the utter lack of city management over the past several years, a number of industrious and enterprising cariocas were able to helter-skelter take over the sands. They rent beach chairs and umbrellas and let you run a tab for cold beer, coconut water, and even food, if I remember right (you just wave your hand and they'll bring it to you). That wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't started offering free (and very refreshing, I grant you) showers, illegally pumping water from artesian wells, using deafening and polluting gasoline motors! I'll let you imagine what happens to the groundwater below.
Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the quiet and quite deserted beach here, with the exception of the ubiquitous trash. You can't get away from this sad evidence of what humankind has been doing to the planet. I try to pick up what I can every day in the small stretch of beach I call my own. So far, I've found a disposable diaper, a long piece of fabric with large staples still attached to it (I assume it was once a boat curtain?), dangerous pieces of glass, an assortment of plastic bottles, and a ton of plastic bottle caps. Usually, feeling virtuous (yeah, yeah, I'm taking liberties with Ovid here!) is its own reward, but today I actually got paid one dollar for my efforts. I even took a picture of my bounty!
The title was inspired by something I read in "The Riddle of the Sands." One of the main characters was very fond of throwing overboard everything he didn't want or need. I know the book was written in 1903, but I still can't forgive him!
posted by Sheila Thomson at
1:44 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Sheila,
Plastic is a scourge that we don't seem to be able to live without.
"In places, there are a million pieces of plastic per square kilometre. That can mean as much as 112 times more plastic than plankton, the first link in the marine food chain. All this adds up to perhaps 100m tonnes of floating garbage, and more is arriving every day." (Source: http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13135349&CFID=64942939&CFTOKEN=39993278)
It's a fascinating (if somewhat depressing) read. Knowledge is power.
- Norm
But people are hopeless litterers, too. I remember one Sunday morning years ago in South Beach (Miami Beach)...this guy and I picked up almost one hundred beer bottles!!!! I kid you not. I was so angry. There are plenty of trash cans on the beach and these pigs (no offense, Ms. Piggy et al.) couldn't even drop the bottles into one of them on their way out...
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