by Janet Koed
EVERY DAY IS COASTAL CLEANUP DAY
Several humans showed up at Refugio Beach on Saturday to help the Ocean Creatures survive in these wild times. By now, many of us know that the plastics we use end up flowing to the sea. We all have a relationship with plastic. Probably everyone who is human knows this product is not going away. We can count the ways it helps us through our daily lives. Even my reusable picnic cooler has begun to shed blue plastic bits when I roll it around refusing to buy another light-weight container on wheels. That cooler will probably outlive me by over 100 years.
Those other Wild things, the Sea Creatures and Winged Ones, didn’t create plastics and yet they suffer from our invention. They seem a bit more vulnerable to this petrochemical pestilence. They don’t seem to reap the benefits we humans do. Think about it. I don’t want to get dark here. It’s a time to celebrate those who act with intent to clean up our human unintentional mess.
This is an opportunity to thank the Humans who showed up at Refugio Beach and other places to clean up our left-behind discards. Those who care enough to come to this kind of event offer hope. We saw families who had several next-gen workers helping. There were teenage students from Santa Barbara Middle School. Elders to toddlers appeared. Hopefully, everyone appreciated this sense of community. I sure did.
