We Need to Clean Up Someone Else’s Act : To Keep Our Beaches Beautiful, You Might Have to Get Rid of the Next Guy’s Trash

The 10th annual Coastal Cleanup Day in Orange County that took place recently was a reminder of how much junk people carelessly leave along the county’s shoreline and estuaries.

More than 45,000 pounds of trash and almost 6,000 pounds of recyclable plastics, aluminum and glass were taken from the beaches and even from the ocean floor. A well-done is in order for the 4,538 volunteers who took out a Saturday to clean up the waterfront and to remove hazards such as plastic from the reach of wildlife. Obviously, they could have spent it doing something else.

Nevertheless, the knowledge that the coast was clear for a day carried with it the sense that the same kind of trash that accumulated in the past year could return easily in the next. There is a message there for the rest of us. The best strategy of all is for each of us to pick up all during the year, and perhaps even take a pledge to leave the beaches a little cleaner than we found them, even if it means picking up a few items left by somebody else.

People who participate in one-shot cleanups like this one, which was sponsored by the California Coastal Commission, can only do so much in beginning to address the problem of pollution. It may be that thousands who took part came away from their day at the beach with their own consciousness raised. A well-done also to the organizations and businesses that took part, or which sent employees to clean up sites. But how many of the rest of us yet have to be converted?

The shoreline is a fragile place, and its delicate balances can be disturbed by the thoughtlessness of visitors. Workers were dispatched to some 21 seaside locations during the cleanup. Many commented on how amazed they were by the trash they found.

We have to recognize that the beaches that grace our area are a precious resource for all of us to enjoy and also to preserve.