Science Forward

Last Sunday, some of my fellow classmates and I went on the scheduled plastic survey and cleanup trip to Plumb Beach. When I arrived, I expected to see massive piles of trash, plastic bottles and food wrappers everywhere. However, at first glance, it seemed as though the beach was clean of all debris, plastic and all. At that moment, I thought that Professor Branco exaggerated a little as to how much plastic was by the shore. As we were placed into groups and given a 20×80 square foot of area, I wasn’t expecting for the survey to take too long. In fact, I doubted we could even fill half of the garbage bag we were given.

Once we began to scrutinize every square foot of sand, I realized how much plastic there really was: Candy wrappers, plastic bags, water bottles, beer and whiskey bottles, and dozens of caps (and cigarette butts). There were so many different types of plastics. When my group found a nail polish brush and a make-up applicator, I finally understood why on the tallying sheet there was a category of “personnel care products.” We also found some plastic with their recycling codes, like a bag with recycling code 3, or a container with recycling code 5. Once we scanned our whole piece of land, we threw out our garbage bag full of plastic and other garbage.

As we discussed in class, there were a few “hot spots” where most of the plastic debris was found. One spot was right by the shore line, because of all the plastic in the ocean that washes up onto shore. Another place where we found most of our plastics was by the weeds and by the fence. Because less wind reaches the bottom of the plants and the fence, the plastics are blown left and right until they reach where less wind is present.

One thing that I might have already pointed out in class that I would also like to address in this post is that when I was at the beach, I didn’t see many garbage cans around. And I know that someone in class said that even with the garbage cans, people will still be throwing trash on the floor. I sort of disagree with that comment because I don’t think most people want to litter. If you put lots of trash cans spanning throughout the whole shore in strategic areas, you could decrease the amount of trash that piles up on the beach. I agree with the fact that not all garbage is coming from the beach goers. Some plastic wash up to shore or are thrown out of windows from cars driving on the belt. But I still feel like if people were given a chance to keep the beach clean, they would do it and walk a couple feet to the nearest trash can.

(not such a great picture, but it shows how much garbage we collected)

(checking to see if the slipper we found belonged to Adam…it didn’t)

Pictures courtesy of Vivian!

-Adiell Melamed