I am a 21-year-old college student native to San Diego, and I am ashamed at my people. I love San Diego and its beaches. I love the sand, the water, the sun ” I love how accessible the beaches are and I love that we, the public, can enjoy the beaches whenever the desire (and sun) calls to us.
Perhaps, though, I feel that beaches shouldn’t be so accessible to the public. I feel that perhaps we do not deserve to set a single foot on the beaches; that the beaches need to be protected ” from us. Here’s why:
Every time I come back to San Diego from break, I come to the beach; and every time I come to the beach I end up spending hours ” hours ” cleaning it up. You see, I am not one of those types (so prevalent in my and my parents’ generation) who can sit around and watch the trash blow over the sand. I must clean it up. It is my moral, philosophical and spiritual obligation to do something about this epidemic.
Make no mistake, this is an epidemic. A littering epidemic. Just yesterday I picked at least 100 pounds of trash from the north side of Pacific Beach to Belmont Park before I was too tired and had to go home. I do not exaggerate; in fact, this is a modest estimate.
Granted, much of the weight was due in part to the half-dozen rusted lobster cages tangled in seaweed and washed up onshore (along with other fishing and boat materials like ropes and broken fishing poles). But the majority of the trash I threw out was none other than the byproduct of disgusting apathy on the part of the public: Plastic bags, fast-food paraphernalia, beer cans, cigarette butts, towels and clothing left behind, ketchup packets, broken balloons, Christmas bows and ribbons, broken glass, water bottles ” the list goes on.
Littering in the street is disgusting. But littering on the beaches is just plain sick. These beaches are home to birds, crabs, insects, and rodents. The trash doesn’t stay on the beach for long. Within 24 hours, the tides carry all that garbage to the oceans.
This makes me sick. This makes me cry. This makes me ashamed of my people.
My grandmother (a PB resident since WWII) tells me that the main cause is the young people getting drunk on the beach. Although this is a big factor (especially when litterers gather together in big drunken trash parties) most of the littering, from what I’ve seen, is just plain ignorant neglect.
I am also told that part of the reason beer and cigarettes are being banned from the beaches is because of this littering epidemic; from my experience with beach trash, however, I feel that if beer and cigarettes are to be banned, fast-food take-out must go as well. (I find more fast-food-related trash than alcohol paraphernalia.)
Now, I am not writing this article to tell you how disgusting we are (the death of hundreds of indigenous plant and animal species in San Diego is enough), nor am I writing this article to tell you how noble I am for picking up all this filth (this is not noble, this is something that everyone who loves the beaches must do to keep them). I am writing this article in hopes that those who read it can wake up to this cultural sickness. To this trash epidemic.
To keep our beloved beaches and to stop the human death-march across the natural landscape we must do the following: change our own lives, habits, awareness and intentions in regards to nature, and help each other work together to clean up our act and save ourselves and the landscape around us.
When I go to the beaches of San Diego, I stand in awe of the vastness of natural splendor before me. The expansive sky, the radiating sun, the endless ocean, the warm sand. I want everyone to experience this place for themselves. But when I see the amount of trash and waste that people leave behind ” we just don’t deserve this place. We do not deserve this beach. We do not deserve this earth until we wake up and start to care for it.
Please, help me appreciate and clean up our beaches. I would like to keep them for my children. Thank you.
” Matt Gillam is a UC Berkeley student activist.