Our Litterwalk Looking for Only the Trashiest of Trash

I don’t like contests. I’m a contest snob. Here I am, this tiny drop of life in a sea of Steemit articles—I should be promoting myself. That would be the logical thing to do, but I am no business woman. I see contests and I just turn my nose up. Nope. Can’t write about that. The topic has to genuinely appeal to me, or someone I respect must rope me into it. When I stumbled across the challenge to pick up trash by @hickorymac I immediately thought of all the interesting trash treasures I’ve found on the beach. I enthusiastically commented on the post that I would do it. Finally, something that excites me. (Check out the contest here.)

If you were looking for a show of impressive service performed for Mother Earth, then stop here. My efforts are actually quite pathetic. I considered backing out of this, but I did leave that enthusiastic comment, and I am a woman of my word.

Today I naively went out to find some trash. Trash is a dime a dozen, right? Cheaper, actually. My town’s populace is growing by the day, bringing more and more of us slovenly humans into it. And the ocean is brimming with plastic sloshing around in garbage islands. Surely a good bit of that has washed up onto the shore here in my town. Surely.

The boy is holding seaweed, not trash.

There is no damn trash on my beach. With my trusty sidekicks—a tot, a preschooler, and an old-man dog—we combed the sand high and low. Every time I go to the beach I pick up something, so I figured if I was actively looking there would be plenty. I was wrong. The old-man dog did sniff out some disgusting things, but they were all biodegradable. I don’t think he grasped our purpose. The tot managed to find a random chunk of PVC pipe, which she was convinced was a shell. The preschooler found a plastic bag that looked to have freshly escaped its owner somewhere sunbathing on the beach, and a broken sand shovel. I found quite a bit of sea glass—mainly chunks of broken beer bottles—but those don’t count. Once glass has been rubbed smooth and cloudy by the ocean it is no longer trash—it is art created by a collaboration of human and ocean. Here is another little piece of ocean art I was able to find:

I went home dejected. Where can one find some decent quality trash? Not the artsy kind, but the really trashy kind. I couldn’t walk the side of a highway safely with my sidekicks. State parks are clean. The playgrounds are usually clean. The places we frequent are, surprisingly, clean. Where is a litter bug when you need one?

I decided to drop the topic from my mind. Dusk was closing in on us. We took a walk to appreciate the cooling evening air. The sky was smeared around with baby blue and baby pink. A glare of fading sun lit up the backdrop and silhouetted the pine trees. The light was still enough to clearly see the ditch we were passing on the farther end of my street. And there, like magic, was the answer to my problems. The litter was right under my nose all along; the litter bugs live among us.

The beauty of the biodiverse grasses that grow in our ditch help to hide the unsightly things. Things like cigarette butts, straws, unidentifiable papers. There were a great deal of bread bags—the nasty cheap stuff that sticks like gum to the roof of your mouth. (In addition to contests, I am also a bread snob.)

We found numerous mini bottles of Fire Ball. Is this a repeat offender, or is Fire Ball just really popular? I have no idea.

The boy endured two bites from some fire ants to collect this trash. That boy of mine is brave.

Perspective of the sidekick.

We managed to fill a grocery bag from scouring just our end of the ditch. Does using a bag you found as trash to collect more trash get bonus points?

A very poor quality picture of some very high quality trashy-trash.

We then traveled back up the road opposite the ditch and did the obligatory dandelion puff blowing. I drank up some of that baby blue and baby pink. There is something about staring up at a moving airplane that reminds you of how tiny you are. An ant in this world spilling over with trash.

X marks the spot