Blinded by Science

Two and a half years ago, I sorted my first bag of beach debris -- categorized, photographed, tried to make sense of what I was finding. I then came up with questions to ask, and tried to come up with ways to test those questions.

In short: I tried to bring science to the problem.

But the trouble with science is, there's always more, deeper, better science that can be done. Questions can be revisited, looked at from different angles. Newer, more precise tests can be devised and performed. Even the best, most-tested scientific theories today are only approximations of reality. Newton's laws of gravity work on Earth but completely fail to predict where Mercury should be. Einstein's gravitational theories get Mercury right, but don't play well (or at all) with quantum mechanics. Meanwhile, quantum mechanics doesn't work in black holes, or the Big Bang.

Every question "answered" just brings still more questions.

It is an endless loop.

And the plastics industry knows this. They refuse to put any real skin in the plastics pollution game, claiming that there needs to be "more science" done on the problem first. "More science" can always be done on a problem; at some point a responsible society has to act against a problem before all the "science" is in.

This happened in 1969:

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, on fire
Source: http://www.oftimeandtheriver.org/resources/
modern/images/BurningCuyahoga.jpg

This happened in 1972, just three years later:

The Clean Water Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act

In the US, when there was public & political will, it took only three years to go from a river on fire to the Clean Water Act. Three years.

Ironically, 1972 was also the year that plastics were first extensively studied in fish populations (link opens as PDF file). Yet 40 years later, where is the Plastic Pollution Act? It keeps getting pushed back and off the plate, as there's a need for "more science." Across the US, this very day, industry lobbyists have stymied plastic bag bans/fees. They insist that cities pay for costly scientific "lifecycle analyses," or they try to ban towns from choosing less pollution on fuzzy -- or junk -- science.

Sometimes you don't need a lifecycle analysis. You just need to look up into the trees:

Source: http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/files/2011/
12/plastic-bag-caught-in-tree-branches-275x183.jpg

or gutters:

Source:  http://mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com/
2011/05/bogotas-plastic-bag-problem.html 

or inside the bellies of sea creatures:

100 plastic bags pulled from stomach of dead sperm whale
Source:  http://oceanwildthings.com/2012/06/
sperm-whale-death-by-100-plastic-bags/ 

Sometimes you just have to say, "This is wrong, it doesn't have to be this way, it should stop."

I enjoy the scientific approach to my beach collections. I like being able to look at the problem, learn to ask questions, make hypotheses, test those hypotheses, ask better questions.

But for me, the biggest questions were answered long ago: What is the biggest source of physical pollution in the ocean? Consumer plastic. What is the way to clean the ocean? Use much, much less plastic.

No more amount of science is going to change that. It's time to stop letting industry play the "needs more science" card. It's time to change the game.

Lifting Spirits and Loafing Around

When you see plastic litter everywhere, it's easy to get despondent. But it's far more productive to get creative.

Our family goes through a loaf or two of bread a week. Buying grocery-store bread, that's scores of hole-lined plastic bread wrappers a year. Dumb, unrecyclable, waste. So I thought, why not just bake bread instead? It turns out, it's so easy. And tasty, nutritious, and almost plastic-free. Plus it makes the house smell amazing.

The Web has a billion recipes. But I wanted to show you mine, for a country-style wheat bread. I'm food-challenged as a rule. If I can make this, and nail it, anyone can!

This is what you need:

Ingredients:

• 2 heaping cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 cup stone-ground wheat flour
• 1 1/4 cups 2% milk
• 3 Tblsp sugar*
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 jumbo egg
• 2 1/2 tsp active yeast^

You will also need:

• Extra unbleached all-purpose flour for mixing/kneading
• Large glass bowl (or other heat-resistant, smooth bowl)
• Bread pan (mine is 9"L x 4"W x 3"H)
• Large, clean work surface like a butcher-block table

For me, the ingredients themselves are a lot of fun. The milk & wheat flour are from our local farm -- Harris Farm in Dayton, Maine. I've walked their fields and petted their cows. Harris is also where we get our eggs, "Annie's Farm-Fresh Eggs" out of Limington.

Moreover, almost all of the above is plastic-free. The only plastic comes from the lid of the milk bottle and the lining of the wheat flour. All the rest is paper, glass, and metal!

On to the recipe.

1. Heat the milk (microwave or saucepan) til it's as hot as you can comfortably touch. This will kick-start the yeast and wake it up.

2. While milk is heating, add the rest of the ingredients in the large bowl.

3. When the milk is ready, pour it into the bowl & stir with a fork for a minute until it's all combined.

At this point, the dough will be sticky & gooey. That's perfect. This is where the fun begins.

4. Preheat the oven to the lowest possible temperature (mine is 170F).

5. On the butcher-block, spread out a handful of all-purpose flour. Get your hands floury too. This is messy. Enjoy it!

6. Scoop out all of the dough from the bowl onto the butcher-block.

7. Sprinkle a little more flour on top of the dough, and all over your hands, then start kneading.

This is super easy once you know the tricks. Start by smushing the heel of one hand down into the dough like you're massaging a very tense shoulder. Push the dough forward with your palm & fingers so it stretches.

This is where the magic happens. Your kneading will start lining up the proteins in the flour to create gluten. Gluten holds the dough to itself, helps it rise beautifully, and gives it a wonderful chewy texture. Don't rush this!

Get into a rhythm. Knead with your left hand until the dough is stretched out. Fold the dough back over on itself and knead with your right hand. Many times the dough will start sticking to the table and/or your hands. When it does, add a little more dry flour to the table & your hand, pick at the stuck bits, free it all up. Do a count. "1," left-hand smush, fold, right-hand smush, "2," left-hand smush, fold, right-hand smush, "3..." Get air into the dough with each fold. Stretch it and work it. Remember to add dry flour when you need it! Don't overthink it, just a poof of flour & back in the game. Feel it all coming together.

8. After 3-5 minutes (a 100-count for me using the above method), you'll have a ball of dough that is no longer sticky to the touch, but is still moist & holds really nicely to itself.

9. Now the dough is ready to rise in the oven. Dust the bottom of your bowl with more flour, then plop the dough ball in the middle. Place a large plate on top, leaving 1/2" of airspace.

10. Put the bowl in the oven, turn OFF the oven (important!), and set the timer for 30 minutes. The residual warmth will help the dough rise.

11. While the dough is rising, grease your bread pan well with butter or olive oil. When the timer goes off, carefully take the bowl out. The dough will have about doubled in size.

12. Reheat the oven again to its lowest setting, then "punch down" the dough. Basically knead it very briefly -- 5 seconds at most -- to squish out the biggest air bubbles.

13. Transfer the dough to the bread pan, stretch it out so it's a rectangular block, and cut a 1/2" slit in the middle. (The slit isn't just for looks. Without it, the bread could rise so high that it breaks and deflates, leaving a dense & disappointing loaf!!)

14. Turn the oven off again. Moisten your fingers with tap water and run along the top of the dough just so it's a little slick. Then put the pan -- uncovered! -- into the oven & set the timer for another 30 minutes.

When the timer dings the 2nd time, your dough will look like this:

15. Leave the pan in the oven, and turn the oven on to 350F. Turn the timer on for another 30 minutes. (If your oven heats to 350F very fast, check the loaf after 25 minutes instead of 30. Ours takes forever to heat, so 30 minutes is perfect.)

16. When the timer dings its 3rd time, you're done! Bread!

Total time: 1 hr 40 minutes. Total time that you had to do anything: ~10 minutes. So easy.

There really is nothing like the smell of fresh-baked bread. It's doubly sweet when you baked it yourself. "How do I keep it fresh?" you ask? Well, it fits perfectly into one of those handy store-bought bread bags stuffed into various nooks & crannies in all of our houses!

The fight against plastic pollution seems hopeless. But it's really not. It doesn't require one massive overwhelming rethink about how we live our lives. Just a whole bunch of tiny manageable ones. Once in a while, pick something that you use that's plastic, and use less of it -- or find an alternative. Tell your friends, share the word. Heck, share a loaf of bread.

Change the game!

---

* This will not make the bread too sweet. The sugar will be food for the yeast, which will devour it and make the bread rise fast & flavorfully.

^ You can also use a pre-made yeast packet. Pre-made packets hold about 2 1/4 tsp. I use 2 1/2 because I like to err on the side of more rather than less. Don't skimp. Give it enough to rise.

Righting a Wrong in Illinois

A 12-year-old girl in Illinois saw the damage that plastic bags were doing to her environment. She asked her town to step up and put an end to plastic bags. Big Plastic noticed. They lobbied to get a bill written making it ILLEGAL for any town to ban plastic bags. Instead, the bill pushes the failed fable of plastic-bag recycling as the way forward. They're hoping to make it a model bill for all states!

Abby Goldberg, Grayslake, Illinois, USA

But it seems that Big Plastic bulled the wrong 12-year-old kid. This girl, Abby Goldberg, isn't backing down without a fight of her own. She's published a petition to convince the Governor to overturn this bit of extreme silliness.

Abby is the future. She is a very brave young champion, with a vision of a world that's less polluted instead of more. The petition drive is going viral. There were a few hundred signatures early this afternoon. Now there are close to 7,500 (Today, June 26, one week later, there are close to 150,000!!). If you agree with her stance, please take a moment to add your name to the list.

Plastic Bag Recycling Hype

Hilex Poly makes plastic bags. They make a very large amount of money from making these "free" bags that you find at supermarkets, Big Box stores, and your local take-out shop. They wish to keep making this money.

They know people are sick of seeing littered plastic bags in parking lots, gulleys, roadsides, parks, playgrounds, and wrapped around (or inside) dead creatures.

A dead, starved pelican, beak wrapped tightly in plastic bag

Plastic bag caught around endangered loggerhead turtle

So Hilex Poly has decided that by promoting "recycling," they will win the day over bag bans.

Hence their latest volley in the spin wars: "Hilex Poly Co. leading by example in battle against plastic bag bans."

In it, their PR firm says, with straight face, that "Legislation doesn’t address the plastic waste problem." They describe a system that uses ~32% recycled content (meaning 68% is brand-new virgin plastic) as "closed loop." Among much else.

I've asked them questions, repeatedly. Oddly, they haven't responded. So I'm asking them here:

• As you well know, industrial film has a very different use history from a consumer shopping bag, in terms of potential contaminants encountered. You say your recycled bags are made of both industrial film & end-user bags. What is the ratio? How much of the recycled resin in your bags is from post-end-user consumers (i.e. actual supermarket bags) and how much from industrial, pre-end-user sources?

• What is your yield loss due to "kick-out"? What percentage of the post-end-user consumer bags returned from supermarkets ends up unusable for recycling into supermarket bags?

• Do you recycle bags that already use recycled resin a second time into new food-grade supermarket bags? Or has the resin broken down too far after 1 recycling to use as food-grade again?

• What percent of your used bags are unrecyclable thanks to post-supermarket user activity (use as trash-basket lining, school lunches, dog-poop containers)?

• A related question: How clean and untouched by any contaminant must an end-user plastic bag be in order to be recycled as food-grade material?

• What is the cost of creating a recycled bag compared to creating a virgin-plastic bag? What does a consumer pay in terms of inflated grocery prices to pay for "free" bags? Is that price increased when recycled bags are used?

• If your average bag has ~1/3 recycled material, then 2/3 of each bag is made with virgin material. If consumers recycled 1 million bags, to use them all in new bags you'd have to make 3 million bags. If those 3 million bags were recycled, to use them all you'd have to make 9 million bags. If 100 billion bags were recycled, to use them all you'd have to make 300 billion bags. Where is the saturation point? At what point do you start getting back too many bags to use in new bags?

I'd like answers. As a consumer, as someone who values the cleanliness & health of the planet, we all deserve the truth. Not spin.

If you would like answers also, please share this blog post with your friends, or on FaceBook, Twitter -- however else you like getting questions answered. I'd be honored for the help.

Laughter and Tears

Our family just returned from a week at Disney World's Animal Kingdom Lodge. Our 5-year-old's first trip to Disney -- and for her a truly magical week. For me, sitting on the balcony with her watching the sun set over a savanna of fairly wild zebras, giraffes, antelopes, and colorful exotic birds -- well, that's magic too.

A good day

Of course, the real world is always around us, even in Disney's 40-square-mile "Girdle of Melian." And I learned long ago that the Flotsam Diaries isn't something I just turn off for a week. So what does Disney look like through the lens of a Flotsam Diarist?

In a word: Schizophrenic.

Walt Disney World heavily touts its green credentials. And given that it's set off 1/3 of its acreage as protected habitat, and was an early adopter of waste-to-energy and zero-emission vehicles, it's at least made an effort to earn them. In fact, Disney holds the State of Florida's "Green Lodging Certification" for all of its resorts.

But a grain of salt is needed. Walt Disney World made Central Florida's economy, and supports it still. Florida has no state income tax. Its coffers depend on tourism, largely Disney tourism. So if the latest buzzword is "green," it behooves the State to shower Disney with green accolades.

This isn't to say that Disney isn't actually trying. It's just that the signs I saw this past week never added up to a coherent story. Take the Mara cafe right at the Lodge. They offer reusable mugs to Lodge guests, and stock paper straws, not plastic.

Both an excellent start

But everything else in the whole cafe is wrapped in single-use plastic. This is what a meal there looks like:

Would you like polymers with that?

Plastic salad, plastic fruit cup, plastic cutlery, plastic coated paper plates, plastic candies. Even the apples were individually plastic-wrapped -- only the bananas & oranges were spared. We tried to cut back, but with limited success;* the healthiest foods were the most plasticized.

And look at that reusable mug. Way too big & bulky to lug through theme parks. In our week I never saw one of them used outside of the Lodge. Instead, vendors were hawking 20oz bottles of Dasani water at $2.75 each. That translates into $17.60/gallon, whereas well-monitored & regulated tap costs about $0.01/gallon! A company that really wants to promote & protect the environment would chill & filter water fountains and encourage re-use of visitors' bottles. But what for-profit entity would turn its back on such a cash cow?

Next, there was the hot & cold with recycling. Some parts of the parks offered obvious recycling bins next to the trash cans, some didn't. Some restaurants used care with their resources (the "Lunching Pad" in Tomorrowland offered cardboard trays and well-marked signs on where to recycle those trays); most didn't. It was literally the luck of the draw. In 2010 Disney claimed that it recycled a full 60% of all the 303,000 tons of waste produced on its properties. From what I saw, I don't know how they get to that number. Perhaps, like Europe, they consider burning trash for energy to be "recycling"?

I ran into still more schizophrenia at the shops. On the one hand, Disney has done something truly impressive -- and rare. Their shopping bags are made of 100% recycled plastic.

This is uneconomic with current technology; a real money loser. But it's good PR. On the other hand, about 0% of these bags will actually get recycled again into anything, so it's dubiously-green good PR. Worse, where were the reusable totes? I don't recall seeing reusable totes at any of the stores we visited; if they were there, they weren't being promoted.

Lastly, a poignant note of self-awareness in the Animal Kingdom Lodge literature. The Lodge is a special place. They've carved a functioning savanna out of the Central Florida jungle, populated it with untamed African animals of grace & beauty, and are very protective of them. As here:

Balloons -- of any kind -- are forbidden at the Lodge. Disney knows that balloons kill animals. They know that balloons escape, and it's usually impossible to track where they've gone until it's too late.

Yet just 3 miles away, vendors sells helium balloons to young, wide-eyed visitors by the hundreds (thousands?). The great folks at Balloons Blow have found Disney balloons on their beach 130 miles away. Who really thinks there are no Disney balloons lurking in the undergrowth on Animal Kingdom property? Disney knows they're there, they have to. But kids love balloons, balloons make money, so balloons are still sold in droves.

Disney's motto is "We Create Happiness." Today, happiness equals convenience. So for all the green talk, Disney caters to a modern throwaway culture, and doesn't do much to curb that culture. It makes nods, it makes efforts. But in the end, it doesn't make waves.

Which, in a way, makes it even worse. Disney property is kept fastidiously clean. But its budget & grounds crew would be the envy of any city treasury in the world. Disney has resources that few places can boast. If people get the belief that they can generate countless tons of waste and it all magically goes "away," what lesson is brought back home? How many visitors see this one sign tucked away in the Animal Kingdom Safari, and remember it two seconds later?

When the millions of tourists leave Disney's carefully crafted fairy tale and return to their lives, wouldn't it be nice if this idea was part of the top tier of good memories & inspiration going forward?

It is a small world, after all.

---

* The water bottle wasn't my choice. Florida's groundwater runs through soluble limestone -- tap tastes minerally, and can be unpleasant, albeit safe. I'm fine with the taste, my daughter called it "Daddy's gross water."

Collection Report March 12, 2012

Monday, March 12. 9:50AM. Just past low tide. A warm one this day, bright sun & energy in the air.

When I stepped onto the beach I was greeted by a new sight:

Low-tide sandbar exposed!

Never seen this sandbar before, not in two years! Pretty excellent evidence that the seabottom offshore is shifting and moving. And if that's happening, pretty good evidence for why this year's collection numbers are so different from last.

With this impediment in the way, the wash-ins were sure to be low. Which gave me a chance to reflect on the beauty of the moment. The stillness of the slack water left behind by the retreating tide, with the gurgling surf juuuuuust out of reach.

Rippled bar

Snail and worm tracks

Gotcha!

Within 10 minutes the turning tide had inundated this peaceful backwater, churning up the ripples & tracks, burying the bar back under silty sea. The ephemeral beauty of the beach.

On to the collection. Zone N:

26 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt chunks)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 2
• Fishing misc.: 5 (rope scrap, lobster trap bumper, trap vinyl coating scrap, 2 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (straw, bottlecap)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (tiny can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 5 (baggie, toy thermometer, tennis ball, vinyl floormat scrap, 1 scrap <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 5
• Paper/wood: 1 (tissue)
• Misc./unique: 2 (rag scrap, leather strap)

The thermometer, dropped that week by someone's little boy or girl, will make a nice addition to my daughter's collection. Otherwise, it was the usual shlock -- and this year's usual amount. Down to Zone S:

13 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (2 asphalt chunks, 1 concrete, 1 vinyl-coatedmetal fencing)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 3 (2 lobster trap vinyl scraps, shotgun shell)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (bottlecap, mint "tin")
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 0
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 3 (2 filters, 1 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

As far back as December I suspected this year was going to play out differently than last. A month ago I started seeing very old seabottom stuff that suggested the seafloor was shifting. And on this day I got to see the effects of that shift -- if briefly -- down at the end of the beach.

The ocean is ever changing. What it chooses to send up onto the sands can tell you a lot about what's going on beneath the waves. If you can figure out how to see it.

Collection Report Feb 29, 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012. 10:15 AM. Happy Leap Day! A gray, brisk morning, low tide, temps about 30 degrees F.

Look, a wrack line! A pathetic one, but more pronounced than most this winter. The latest high-tide was extremely weak though, barely pushing swash 1/3 of the way up the beach.

Still, the waves & winds managed to form a new range of cusps -- high grounds of sand with low troughs in-between, spaced evenly up and down the shoreline. And they dumped enough sand to bury some (much?) of what they brought in:

Well hello, little... scrap of bag?

Um, no, entire bag!

Just north of my zones, a washed-in lobster trap held half a dozen broken beer bottles from a recent party. More troubling is what happens to a trap as it slowly rots on the seafloor.

Tortured

When the vinyl scrapes against the bottom enough to expose the steel, the steel rusts & bubbles out. Eventually it splits and bursts the vinyl coating into tiny scraps. Each rusting lobster trap can spew off 1,000 or more little pieces of vinyl that then bounce colorfully along the sea bottom and likely into the food web. There are likely half a million -- or more -- rotting lobster traps at the bottom of the Gulf of Maine.

At any rate, the week had some excitement, though not for volume of debris. Zone N:

19 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 2
• Fishing misc.: 2 (claw band, vinyl trap coating)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related glass/metal: 3 (1970s can scrap, 2 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 6 (bag, rubberband, plastic cord, 1 scrap >1", 2 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 3
• Paper/wood: 1
• Misc./unique: 1 (fabric scrap)

Number-wise, nothing worth noting. But this guy is worth noting:

This pull-tab era aluminum top to a steel can is 30+ years old. It's the second such ancient piece of aluminum to wash into Bay View within a few weeks. If an offshore sandbar is shifting, revealing ancient debris, maybe it's blocking the transport of new debris at the same time. The junk is still out there. Maybe this humble scrap is a big clue as to why it's currently bypassing Bay View.

Anyway, on to Zone S:

14 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 2 (claw band, monofilament line)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (sauce pack lid, fork/spoon scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (bottlecap, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 4 (bag, old comb, 1 scrap >1", 1 scrap <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

This poor thing is probably glad finally to be at rest:

I wonder if it had been buried under a sandbar for 30 years too?

Another week down. The numbers are as unimpressive as they've been most of the winter. But sometimes it's not about how much you find; it's about how much you can find out.

Collection Report Aug 4, 2011

Thursday, August 4, 7:22 AM. Seagulls crying in the distance. Flipflops left by the lifeguard tower, a ratty beach chair folded up & stowed away. (Forgotten?) Fog slowly burning off. Welcome to Bay View, Saco, Maine:

Still love seeing a beach like this

The week brought a little more energy to Bay View. Recent tides had crept higher up the shore, a few bits tumbled in from the deep ocean. But in general, the word of this day was still "dull." In fact, the above is the only picture I took while out and about. This had basically been another busy beach week, with busy-beach trash. Here's Zone N:

229 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (asphalt chunks)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 15
• Fishing misc.: 17 (4 rope, 8 pieces of rope twine unfurled from impromptu "art" on shore, 4 claw bands, 1 trap tag)
• Food-related plastics: 32 (15 food wrappers, 3 fresh fruit stickers, 7 straw wrappers, 4 bottle caps, straw, chewing gum, spoon scrap)
• Food-related metal/glass: 10 (burned tin can, 4 bottle caps, 2 foil wrappers, 2 sea glass, pull tab)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 32 (9 bags/scraps, balloon, 2 bandaids, flosser, watergun stopper, sunglasses, rubberband, tie strap, pen cap, twist-tie, 5 ribbon bits, dessicant, 7 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 93 (89 cigarettes, 4 plastics)
• Paper/wood: 21 (13 paper scraps, 7 firecracker sticks, popsicle stick)
• Misc./unique: 5 fabric scraps

Going on the record here, I hate these things:

Fresh fruit, now with more plastic!

I know, of all the things to hate. But it's so unnecessary. Even a person trying to be healthy, eating an unpackaged piece of fresh fruit -- instead of corn syrup, salt, and modified food starch -- ends up with plastic at the end of their snack. Why, and how, did we do this in just a couple generations?

The other thing I hate:

I have 2100 more at home

The cigarette numbers have been lower on the beach than last year. I hate that I'm kind of happy to "only" find 89 of these in a week. And the parking lot that I scoured in June is utterly trashed with them again. (But I have exciting news on that front, which I'll only tease with here. Maybe somebody will take the Bait?)

Anyway, food packs, cigarettes, And a quick view of Zone S:

31 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (fence slat)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 4
• Fishing misc.: 5 (fishing rope twine, from another decayed bit of art)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (food wrapper scrap, straw wrapper, gum)
• Food-related metal/glass: 2 (can scrap, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 7 (firecracker, tape, 1 scrap >1", 4 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 6
• Paper/wood: 2 (popsicle stick, firework stick)
• Misc./unique: 1 (tiny scrap of fabric)

Wow. There is just nothing to say about this. Wouldn't it be nice to think that a long stretch of Saco Bay really stayed this relatively clean week after week?

Collection Report July 1, 2011, Part I

Looking through my pictures for my July 1 cleanup, this one lends itself to more of a photoblog. So, without more ado, let's give it a whirl.

If this morning looks about perfect, it was:

The calm before the swarm

And just in time for the 4th of July weekend, an upgrade out in the parking lot:

Semi-private bliss

Yet even with two huge no-smoking signs, some people simply will not get it:

Oh, maybe it was just a suggestion?

But looking beyond the manmade marring, something interesting is happening in Bay View beach.

Reclamation

Sea levels creep slowly up. Development & erosion take their toll. Yet Bay View's dunes are bucking the trend. They're actually moving back onto the sand! In busier Zone N, it's just occasional tufts. But in Zone S, the new dune layout has been formalized with a fresh fence, 12-15 feet closer to the ocean than last year! So Zone S's usable beachfront is compressed. In fact, high tides now mostly eliminate the beach there. It'll be interesting to see if Zone S trash plummets.

Neat ecology aside, this was a day filled with other surprises. Not least being this:

You're a long way from home

This plastic disc is one of 4.3 million released into the Merrimack River on March 11 from the Hooksett, New Hampshire wastewater treatment plant in a big screw-up. Since then, they've been found from Maine to Rhode Island. This one is the first found as far north as Saco. It probably found a mini-gyre off Cape Cod, spun counter-clockwise, & got shot out toward Saco Bay. Many others have likely picked up the Gulf Stream southeast of Cape Cod, and will start washing up on European shores by late summer.

Note: This disk was in the ocean for nearly four months and is pristine. Another piece of plastic washed up nearby, not nearly as pristine.

Rotten to the core

This squirt bottle nozzle is crusted, faded, brittle, cloudy, and ancient. However long ago it was lost, it wasn't a few weeks, or even four months. When plastics get in the ocean, they will survive a long, -long- time.

Moving along, I (1) added yet another perfect beach toy to Ruby's growing collection:

Will probably open a re-sale shop this fall

(2) wondered if the rest of this is now in an endangered marine mammal's gut:

What goes up, comes down

(3) pondered just how many tons of this material have been lost to the Gulf of Maine:

Fishing rope is polypropylene, and persists for centuries

and (4) reflected on today's big battles between powerful industry lobbyists and grass-roots common sense:

Hard as it is to believe, I'm still betting
on common sense in the end

Photoblog: off. Amazing what we can find & learn strolling the beach, when we really start to look.

Speaking of which, I'll follow this up shortly with the actual numbers for the week. They're pretty astounding. And not in a good way.