We used to participate in beach clean-ups a lot when we first got here. We're still members of Rescate Playas Isabela (Rescue the Beaches of Isabela). Once a month or so I volunteer to take water samples at various beaches so they can monitor bacteria levels. But we don't go to beach clean-ups any more and people wonder why.
There are really two reasons. First, we do beach clean-ups every day. Every day when I run the dogs on the beach I pick up trash people left behind. It's usually plastic grocery bags, plastic cups (yesterday I picked up over 100), beer cans and beer bottles that people brought to the beach but were too drunk, too lazy, too ignorant or too apathetic to take home (or at least to the trash cans in front of Ola Lola's).
I come from a hiking/backpacking/canoeing and now snorkeling/diving background. The rule is "take nothing but photos and memories, leave nothing but footprints" and in the case of canoeing and diving, leave nothing. In other words, you carried it in, you carry it out.
"My" bit of beach runs from the end of the little calle we take to get to the beach to about the end of Yippie Calle aka Deadend Road. It's about a quarter of a mile of beach front. Not at lot, but it's "mine" and I want it clean.
Does my small effort help keep the beach at Jobos clean? No. And that brings me to the second reason we - or at least I - don't do beach clean-ups any more. I'm just not into picking up other people's trash. If people are too (see above) to pick up their own trash, they deserve the trashy beaches they get. It's not my job (paid or unpaid) to pick up after them.
I'll donate money. I'll work on education projects. I'll pick up on my own little stretch of beach. But I won't spend my free time picking up trash somebody else was okay bringing to the beach but was too inconsiderate to pick up and dispose of properly.
Here endith my rant.
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