My Reluctant Beef with Beach Cleans.

Collected these macro & micro plastics on our walk from our last new moon circle to the sea for a swim.

We walked the tide line & removed these non-biodegradable (but yes, technically “degradable,” these materials will continue to break UP into smaller bits but won’t break DOWN for 10 centuries) plastics from their inevitable path to the sea.

I admit I have become a bit jaded. About BEACH CLEANS. I recognise the clean up as a hugely important aspect of the plastics awakening & empowering action item for engaging ppl in the movement. And I know that the heavier side of the plastics crisis is further upstream, when the oil is violently pulled from the earth in communities that are poisoned & forgotten. In the manufacture of plastics in poor conditions w/o any regard for the workers’ health/ lungs. The mass distribution of these single-use plastic products as packaging for other products, used & immediately discarded, THEN ending up as beach trash.

When the focus is: the clean up of beaches; I say Yes, And.

It is good to clean our beach. It matters. AND it creates a change maker within. A change maker that hopefully looks beyond this one end point for plastics, further upstream, where the irreparable damage begins. At the origin: crude oil & plastic products. Packaging for our STUFF.

100% clean a beach. AND let it be a gateway to supporting plastic bans, regulating plastic producing corporations, banning incineration & false solutions like plastic roads that pollute micro plastics w every roll of a tire. This is a complicated issue & I def don’t want to create cognitive dissonance or apathy. But it’s like when million$ went to the @oceancleanup & IT DIDN’T WORK bc the ocean currents travel faster than the plastic collecting booms, & Boyan Slat had to borrow beach plastics off @sustainablecoastlineshawaii for press pics.

Good for awareness. But it not a true-fix/solution. The solution is upstream. It stops the SOURCE of this pollution. It turns OFF THE TAP of these plastics. It has to target the production of plastics. Beach Clean data helps create a compelling case for this.

Yes, clean beaches. AND support upstream activism & solutions.