Garbage on the Beach

Yesterday I went with my family to the beach. It has been stormy the last few days and we wanted to see how the water looks and what kinds of things had been washed up to shore. We went to Fort Stevens State Park in Warrenton, Oregon. There are multiple places where we could go out to the beach. It was raining some, but we kept going. We ended up at the South Jetty site first where a construction of the Jetty was going on. It was interesting to observe the huge rocks being dumped to re-build the Jetty. The water was very high and hitting the Jetty very hard coming over to the other side in multiple places. It was amazing to watch so much power. It was almost like the water saying you can build, and I will destroy.

Then, we decided to explore the beach. We had to go to another area as the South Jetty was closed. We went to Area B and walked out to the beach through some woods. When we got to the top of a sand dune, we realized we can not go down, the water was in too much there was no place to walk. We stayed a little watched the water then decided to go look at another area. We ended up by the Shipwreck of the Peter Iredale. The water was in half of the parking lot was covered with sand; the restroom area was covered with sand. There was a lot of debris on the beach. Could not do down to the beach much because of the water but was able to walk on the side and the bottom edge of the sand dune. I took some plastic bags with me for garbage. There was a lot of garbage. I ended up with two bags full plus carried a big bottle of soda back. Found multiple foam fragments, a lighter, a ball, a piece of wire, rope fragments, 3 water bottles, another small bottle, and too many plastic caps, wrappers and plastic pieces to count. I was overwhelmed by the amount of garbage. I could have spent the whole day and not even make a dent.

I felt so sorry for our birds and sea animals that they have to deal with all this garbage that we created. There is no escape for them. They don’t know the difference between a seed or a piece of plastic. I have been overwhelmed by sadness thinking about it. Every time I go to the beach, I take a plastic bag and pick up stuff. I know it is not much, but it is something. However, I think we need to do more as a society to reduce waste that hurts our environment, other animals and ultimately it hurts us. I think if waste continues this way, we will end up drowning in our own garbage. I am very grateful that there are no more plastic bags in Oregon in the stores. I think we need to get plastic out of our lives as much as we can. I saw a documentary recently showing pats of the world drowning in the plastic garbage that we created, and people are getting sick. I think we can do more. Each of us can make conscious choices and demand change. I want future generations to be able to enjoy this planet and be able to walk on the beach without seeing piles of garbage.