Now then, I go to the beach often as I live just four streets away from the sea-front and walking on the beach is one of my most favourite things to do, in the world, ever.
But today, inspired by Beach Buoy I took a carrier bag with me for my walk on the beach. Beach Buoy also lives by the sea, a little further down the coast from where I live. He tweets pictures of his walks showing things he's found. And he's found some amazing things - a message in a bottle, for instance, old pottery, broken shards of history. He blogs his finds here.
He also carries out a 15 minute beach clean and that was my inspiration today. On my beach walk I took a bag and without deliberately looking for plastic on the sand, if I came across any I picked it up and popped it in my bag. Our local beaches are more or less clean, so when I started my walk (which lasted an hour, 30 mins to the rocks and 30 mins back) I didn't pick up anything as there was nothing to find. But on the walk back, my steps took me along the line where the seaweed tangled with all kinds of plastic. Unfortunately, I couldn't get near the plastic on this bit of the beach as the seaweed was covered with and jumping with flies. I mean, I'm all for helping save the planet and all that, but you know, flies. Millions of them. Eww.
So I walked back on the edge of the seaweed and the flies, where the plastic had been thrown against the sea wall. I picked up what I could as I wandered back home and I ended with a plastic carrier bag full of other people's crap. Crap that won't disappear. Crap that floats around the oceans of the world and creates plastic islands, killing fish and sea life.
I know taking just one bag of plastic from the beach isn't going to change much, but it's a drop in the ocean, a start.
Beach Buoy once said there was no better sound than the noise of the plastic he'd picked up off the beach as it rattled its way into his recycling bin. I know the joy of that noise now.
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I'm on twitter @flaming_nora
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