Collection Report July 31, 2011

Still playing catchup with the backlogged cleanups. So today, welcome back to Bay View, July 31 edition!

6:50 AM on a Sunday, and already hopping

Lots of dawn-peepers & dogwalkers enjoying the early morning quiet. More bright, beautiful sun promising another amazing -- and crowded -- beach day.

The headline for this week's finds would read: "Man Visits Busy Beach, Finds Trash." The summer tides are weak. Little seaweed is washing in, or shells, or other flotsam. So what ends up in my trash bag is just a cross-section of Maine beach life. Maybe interesting enough for that reason alone. But by now, very predictable. Such as:

Every week

So this will be a pretty quick report, without the ooh's and ahh's of long-distance journeys. First, as always, Zone N:

236 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt, fence slat)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 16
• Fishing misc.: 3 (bits of fishing rope twine)
• Food-related plastics: 41 (27 food wrappers!, 7 bottlecaps, bottle, 2 straws, 2 gum, 2 cup lids)
• Food-related metal/glass: 21 (5 cans, 6 caps, 8 wrappers, 2 glass scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 29 (9 bags/scraps, cap, 3 toys/scraps, 2 ribbon/tape, 2 beach furniture, 11 scraps >1", 1 scrap <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 81 (79 filters, 2 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 41 (8 firework sticks, 5 firework casings, 28 scraps)
• Misc./unique: 5 (sock, 4 fabric pieces)

See? Beachgoers. End of story. But 27 food wrappers... Wow? Or the inevitable result of a culture of single-serve snacks packed in plastic tubs, wrapped in plastic film, handed to us in a plastic bag?

Quickly over to Zone S:

37 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (wood block)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 11
• Fishing misc.: 6 (2 rope bits, 4 twine)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (bottle, 3 straw wrappers, straw)
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 4 (2 bag scraps, toy scrap, firecracker)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 8 (7 filters, 1 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 2 (popsicle stick, paper scrap)
• Misc./unique: 0

Still too little here to feel "natural"; I suspect a weekly local cleanup effort. Which, if true, kind of kills the value of Zone S. Still, until I know for sure, I'll keep at it. If there's anything here worth a glance, it's the batch of blue Nerf-like foam, some of which also ended up (started up?) in Zone N. Also, the fishing rope comes from this totem pole from the prior week. Cute when it was made. Now? Just more litter.

Anyway, that's July for the record books. Summertime, and the picking is easy. On to August!