Today, The Club at Westpoint participated in the annual Coastal Clean-Up Day, a first for our club! We had a total of four volunteers that spent two hours collecting trash around Westpoint Harbor. Being an owner of a boat at Westpoint, I consider the marina incredibly well kept and clean. In fact, I expressed doubt we’d find much trash to pick up. Turns out, if we slowed down, and looked closely we could find trash at the sides of the parking lot. We started near the dumpsters (I did not count anything found in the immediate vicinity of the dumpsters) and we headed east towards the dry storage, walking the space south of the parking lot, on the side of the salt pond. We covered the area all the way back to the slough. Then, we started at the dumpsters and went west, on both sides of the parking lot, out to the pathways of Pacific Shores. What’s astonishing is that each of us averaged nearly 10 pounds of trash. We collected, counted and weighed 35 pounds of trash in total between 9 am and 11 am. Overwhelmingly, cigarette butts are the most popular item found, we counted nearly 100! Next popular item was plastic pieces, where we found everything from wrappers to food trays to boat hose (think engine cooling hose) pieces, lots of them.
I had a reception table set up near the dumpsters, and during the morning several people from the marina stopped to learn what we were doing. All expressed interest in participating next year. We also had several “walkers” drop by, they too expressed interest for next year and were pleased to hear what the club was doing. A big thank you to Medea, Neal, and Tod! The four of us today represented The Club at Westpoint and kept 35 pounds of trash from finding it’s way into the water.
To reflect on what’s possible, just up the street at Sequoia Yacht Club, they had 51 volunteers and collected nearly 500 pounds of trash!
Next year, bigger and better!
Shannon
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