California Coastal Cleanup Day

An octopus with a water bottle head and bottle cap suction cups. A butterfly with candy wrapper wings, and a beached turtle with a spare tire shell. This sounds like as bizarre alternative universe, but it’s an artistic representation of a sad reality. These images from the 2007 posters for California Coastal Cleanup Day, a localized title for International Coastal Cleanup Day, show the effect of man’s actions on nature. These provocative images are a much more successful campaign than a simple “Don’t litter” poster.

This series of posters gives you the breakdown how many bottle caps, cigarettes, knives, forks and spoons and wrappers were collected from 1985, the first cleanup day, to two years ago 2007. The image and the facts are a one-two punch. They are meant to be a wake-up call about how our absent-minded littering, on the beach and in the streets injures and kills marine life. We’ve all seen pictures of cute little sea critters trapped in six-pack beer rings and felt a pang, but it requires more than just momentary sympathy.

During International Cleanup day, volunteers come to collect trash, but sometimes see casualties. In addition to recording how much and what kind of trash they collect, the site captains record entangled animals, what they’re entangled in and whether they are alive, recovered or dead. Thousands of sea mammals are killed and injured each year because of trash in the ocean. International Cleanup day is an effort to mitigate these consequences. The goal is to one day have more volunteers turn out and less trash to clean up or in a perfect world, no trash.

There are common sense ways to reduce trash in the ocean such as putting it in a trash can. Everything you drop on the ground eventually ends up in the ocean that’s how a watershed works. So when someone flicks their cigarette butt in the gutter downtown it ends up in the ocean. Remember the “Cig Egret?”
When you put your trash in a garbage can, it will end up in a landfill, which is not ideal. The best way is to reduce trash is to reduce your consumption in general and specifically your consumption of plastic, which accounts for the majority of the trash found in the ocean.

Here are some ways you can reduce your carbon footprint.

The next International Coastal Cleanup Day is coming up soon on September 19th 2009, so make sure it mark it on your calendar.

The Evils of Water bottles

Polar bear tears.

Welcome to the Watershed Project Blog!

Hi, welcome to The Watershed Project Blog, this is an intern’s supplement to the main site. Here I will write about watershed issues, current events, upcoming events, interviews and whatever else occurs to me and is relevant.

The website will meet all your The Watershed Project needs like has all the info calendar of events, descriptions of the workshops and all descriptions of the work they do, but here you’ll get extra details and stories about the watershed issues.

If you’re unclear about what a watershed is, fear not, you are not alone. Fact of the matter is everyone lives in a watershed. In a Watershed, surface water and ground water are “shed” and flow into the same large body of water whether it’s a lake, river or ocean. The water flows down and either picks up sticks, stones and minerals, or in urban area runoff like oil and trash and carries it to the sea. Yuck!

The good news is there are many things people are doing, like recycling, and can do, like composting, to protect their environment. The Watershed Project brings community together to teach them to understand and appreciate the natural world.


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