plastic pollution Archives -

A Lightness of Being

By Simone Lipscomb | July 21, 2013

Sunday mornings, prior to sunrise, find me traversing an empty beach lot to the dune line. A short climb over ever-growing dunes and a quick walk across flat, sugar-white sand beach and voila! Wrack line. My target for the 1.5 mile search eastward.

I walk toward the rising sun. I’m looking for sea turtle tracks but this time of solitude at sunrise gives me space to be with the ocean, to open myself to the day and what life presents. Sounds great, right?

Today like most all other days I opted to carry my heavy camera, heavy super-wide angle lens and my carbon fiber tripod…not so heavy but after 3 miles it all starts to feel rather burdensome. I can’t help it though. Try as I might to leave the sturdy gear at home, the artist in me wants to see dawn through my lens. The environmentalist in me wants to pick up trash on the walk back. So a heavy trash day, like today, leaves me exhausted.

As I trudged back west picking up trash, the wind was blowing strongly against me. Lots of plastic in various forms littered the beach and so I was constantly bending over while trying to keep tripod and camera cases from falling off my tired shoulders. It was very frustrating….the trash, the soft sand and the heavy gear. I felt so weighed down.

Truthfully though, all of the stuff I was carrying was light compared to the inner burdens that were weighing me down. I struggled with my anger over trashy humans who throw garbage off of fishing boats, with tourists who leave plastic bottles, plastic caps, fireworks, plastic bags, and cigarette butts behind. After a mile and a half of gathering up the wastes humans left behind I felt weighed down with anger, frustration, feelings of hopelessness for our collective future and the health of our planet. And any other heavy emotion lingering about seems to pop up when I am tired. So hello my little friends….good to see you remember me. (Not!) Weary walking, this day. Very weary walking.

I was so exhausted toward the end of my walk I tried to push past trash rather than stop and put it in the already-heavy bag. But I couldn’t. I wanted to weep with fatigue and dehydration yet my love for the planet strengthened me to stop and collect the bits of garbage. I had to deal with it. I don’t want to do this! I’m tired, I silently whined. I wondered how long it would take the ghost crabs and other scavengers to pick my bones clean if I collapsed. And yes, I have a vivid imagination with a flair for the dramatic. Don’t artists always suffer for their work?

In spiritual studies, which are really studies in healing inner wounds, psychic debris and ego-driven living so our highest self can shine forth, I have sometimes wished for amnesia. Once a personality flaw is unearthed and brought to consciousness it won’t go away or get fixed by ignoring it. I thought of this as I picked up plastic garbage from the beach. Try as I might to walk past it I just couldn’t. My commitment to wildlife is to pick up this 1.5 mile stretch of beach every Sunday morning. Like my commitment to personal growth and healing leads me to keep working on myself no matter how tired or weighed down I feel. Oh, happy day. Right?

When I reached my car the feeling of letting everything go was amazing. The struggle had been great this day. Strong wind, soft sand, lots of trash…heavy gear. But the payoff…oh, the payoff. Feeling my heart and mind connect through my art. Knowing that the trash I collected will not harm innocent creatures…hoping that something I do will make a positive difference for the planet…this and singing to the sea gave me an incredible lightness of being.

The struggles? I still think it’s all worth it. Just look at this beautiful planet. Look at the sea!! And if you dare, look into my ever-lightening heart.

Blue Dawn

By Simone Lipscomb | June 20, 2012

Today’s sea turtle nest patrol didn’t yield a new nest or crawls but it yielded over 100 pounds of trash in a mile and a half stretch of beach. My regular patrol volunteer buddy couldn’t walk today so I walked by myself. I arrived at the beach before 5am and took time exposure photographs of the Gulf. The water looks magically calm and surreal in the images but in reality it was quite rough.The high seas add to the regular beach trash by dumping all manner of junk along the shoreline.

When I got to my turnaround point I saw another volunteer and she had ‘mistakenly’ walked the beach looking for nests. I was busily picking up trash, as I made the return trip, with a bag I had secured from the kind folks at Gulf State Park Pier. Lu and I filled the bag to the point where we had to empty it three times. A 30 minute walk to over 2.5 hours to do while picking up litter. Here’s a sample of what we found:

Plastic drink bottles, plastic water bottles, glass beer bottles, been cans, soda cans, two disposable diapers, a plastic tampon applicator, over 100 plastic bottle tops, plastic bins, plastic tubs, oil containers, balloons, kites, string, monofilament fishing line, fishing leaders, latex gloves, flip flops, broken sun glasses, cheap snorkeling masks, wool sock, countless kids plastic beach toys, plastic floats, candy wrappers, foil drink (Capri sun) plastic straws, styrofoam cups and plates and pieces, plastic cups, pieces of large plastic ‘things,’ large plastic water bottle (for a cooler), half an Otterbox brief case encased with all kinds of ocean life, food wrappers, foil, unidentifiable plastic things…..and on and on and on. There were also cigarette butts by the thousands that we didn’t pick up. The problem with EVERYTHING we picked up and the cigarette butts is that none of it degrades, decomposes…goes away. At least not for a VERY long time.

Here’s the time frame of decomposition for some of the trash we found:

Wool sock–1 to 5 years, cigarette butts–10-12 years, foamed plastic cups–50 years, plastic containers–50-80 years, aluminum can–200-500 years, plastic bottles–450 years, disposable diapers–550 years, monofilament fishing line–600 years, plastic bags–200-1000 years.

Take a minute and think about this….breathe it in and sit with it. (Pause).

Just yesterday I read an article on recycling cigarette butts. Did you know they are made of plastic? They don’t decompose as some may think. A cigarette tossed on the ground is there to stay for a LONG time.The filter is made of the same material as plastic bags. One company is making guitar picks and other happy things from cigarette butts instead of the butts being put into land fields or worse, ending up on the ground. Cigarette butts are the most common type of litter found.

Yesterday I read an article by a favorite reporter of mine, Dahr Jamail. Oceans of Pollution, is an important read for all concerned about the health of our planet. Jamail quotes a study that warns, “without profound and prompt changes in human behavior, we will cause a ‘mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological consequences.'” He also quotes Alanna Mitchell, “Every tear you cry…ends up back in the ocean system. Every third molecule of carbon dioxide you exhale is absorbed into the ocean. Every second breath you take comes from the oxygen produced by plankton.”

If our plankton dies in the ocean, we die. It’s as simple as that. The ocean produces the majority of oxygen we breathe…even if you happen to live in the center of a continent with no access to the ocean, the ocean is what gives you oxygen. As plastic gets more deeply rooted into our ocean food chain, we are seeing more ill effects and consequences from the toxins used to create it. We are quite literally killing our ocean and therefore, killing ourselves.

As Lu and I walked, several people came up and thanked us, one guy expressed his love of the planet, another young man expressed his frustration at how people can be in the presence of such beauty and completely miss it and trash it. A few people actually helped us along the way. Some hung their head in shame as we carried the heavy bag, filled with human-generated pollution and as I made eye contact, I saw their grief at what, collectively, we are doing to our planet.

It was no coincidence that two strong articles came across my desk yesterday and today I found myself surrounded and astounded by a mountain of trash in just a mile and a half of Gulf of Mexico beach. We no longer have the luxury of turning away when we see places like this. We must breathe deep and connect with our compassion for all life and do whatever we can to make a positive difference. We can no longer luxuriate in anger, frustration, hopelessness. Now is the time to be active stewards of our Ocean.