Collection Report June 2, 2011

After far too long, the last couple collection reports of my first full year at Bay View beach, Saco, Maine are on their way.

June 2, 10:30AM. Moody skies on this first collection post-Memorial Day. Even if I didn't know the date, two big clues that unofficial summer had started:

The trash bins are crowning

and:

The half-burned bonfires are back

This was an odd day. A mix of local debris, such as a little nest of cigarette butts all clustered together, buried in the sand by a lingering chainsmoker; and washed-in debris, such as the plethora of fresh & far-traveled lobster claw bands that I mentioned in this post.

Fancy meeting you here

And then there's this:

Surely a good story here

So, on to the details of what was a busy day. Zone N:

174 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt chunk, slat)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 65 (27 from one cooler, 11 colored bits, 2 big clamshells, 25 plate/clamshell pieces)
• Fishing misc.: 18 (8 claw bands, 5 rope, 3 twine from rope, monofilament in seaweed, shell wadding)
• Food-related plastics: 4 (bottle cap, straw wrapper, Hershey's wrapper, sour candy wrapper)
• Food-related metal/glass: 12 (3 cans, 2 burned cans, scrap, 2 bottle caps, gum wrapper, 3 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 21 (6 bag/film, prescription bottle, 2 rubber bands, "hoodie" tag, water gun cap, another cap (?), 4 scraps >1", 5 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 40 (38 filters, plastic filter, cigar pack)
• Paper/wood: 9 (wooden duck (?), 6 food labels, weight warning, cardboard disk)
• Misc./unique: 3 (nonfishing woven rope, 2 metal necklaces)

65 pieces of styrofoam and a wooden duck cutout. You can't make this stuff up.

On to Zone S:

81 finds:

• Building materials: 3 (2 asphalt scraps, plywood scrap)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 40 (10 cooler bits (?), 11 colored bits, 19 misc)
• Fishing misc.: 6 (Canada band, rope, 4 twines from rope)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (Heinz label, 2 mini straws, 2 milk cap seals)
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 20 (5 odd shredded tubes, golf ball, pen, 2 strappings, twine, 3 bag/film, 7 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 4
• Paper/wood: 3 (2 firework sticks, paper wipe)
• Misc./unique: 0

40 more pieces of styrofoam, most probably from the same cooler, etc. that started crumbling apart up in Zone N. Wonder how much plastic pollution one styrofoam cooler can create? This much.

I also started finding something that stumped me. (Which is getting harder to do.) Check it out:

What the heck?

Each looks about the size & weight of the cap to a ball-point pen. But they're not. 2" long, hollow, gray, hard plastic. Fairly intact on one end, but each one is exploded on the other end. Rusty inside, as though a piece of thick steel wire/cable was inside; unless it's powder residue? Any thoughts?

Anyway, this one week I collected 255 new pieces of trash. From a lazy, fairly quiet beach in southern Maine. On a day when winds prevailed from the west, and probably had already blown quite a bit back out into the bay.

Summer, she is back.