A row of discarded plastic items

On a recent walk along the local beach in Seal Beach, California, I was appalled at the trash strewn along the shore. Within a 100 yard span, there was enough rubbish to fill a couple of large black trash bags.

Where on earth had all this stuff come from? Piles of broken bits of Styrofoam piled up along the rocky jetty of the San Gabriel River, while literally hundreds of plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes, interspersed with tangles of seaweed and fishing line lined the low water line. Seagulls pecked at what they thought was food but was, in fact, Styrofoam particles, broken plastic bottles, bottle caps and other trash.

With only my Blackberry on hand, for the next half hour, I recorded some of the debris. Next time I go on a beach walk, I will take a trash bag, but the extent of the debris was so unexpected, I hadn’t thought ahead of time that I would need one.

Plastic is the Main Offender

Plastics make up the majority of the debris found on the beaches around the world. This comes from land-based sources, trash that hasn’t been disposed of properly further inland. Some may have blown into rivers and streams and been transported to the sea. Heavy storms also contribute to this distribution. In this case, the San Gabriel River’s flow dumped the debris into the sea and then the current swept it down the beach.

Not smart

According to Beachapedia, a service of Surfrider, “Analysis of more than 10 years of volunteer beach cleanup data indicates that 60 to 80 percent of beach debris comes from land-based sources. And debris in the marine environment means hazards for animals and humans. Plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide, including 86 percent of all sea turtle species, 44 percent of all sea bird species, and 43 percent of marine mammal species.”

In a recent report from the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters, the amount of plastic debris, swirling in the oceans and particularly in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), has increased 100 fold in the last 40 years. According to a paper published by Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, “A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment.”

We can blame wind and weather, but ultimately the finger must be pointed at people who litter and a lot of the debris we see on the beaches is left there by lazy, uneducated beachgoers.

Of all the MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) generated, plastics are the least recycled and are one of least degradable. In 2011, according the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) over 13 percent of plastic containers and packaging was recycled, mostly from soft drink, milk, and water bottles. Plastic bottles were the most recycled plastic products. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and jars were recovered at about 29 percent. Recovery of high density polyethylene (HDPE) natural (white translucent) bottles was estimated at about 28 percent. Compare those figures to paper; 71.31 million tons generated and 62.5 percent recycled.

Doesn’t it make sense to recycle something that takes eons to degrade? It is estimated that a plastic bottle takes 450 years to degrade and fishing line, a whopping 600 years. Why not pop the bottle in a recycle bin and have it come back in another life as a reusable grocery bag or hi-tech clothing?

What you can do to help:

• Avoid disposable bottle, cans and other containers and buy products made from recycled materials with little or no packaging.
• Use cloth or other reusable grocery bags.
• Set a good example by cleaning up your area before leaving the beach.
• Teach your children the basics of recycling.
• Join an International Beach Cleanup or volunteer for Coastal Cleanup Day (typically the 3rd Saturday in September) and for other local beach cleanup events.
• Always have a spare trash bag and pick up any debris you find and dispose of correctly.

All Blackberry photos: Susan Colby

Photo by Charles Williams

It’s been a few months since the holidays, so you’ve probably dug out from all the snail-mail appeals for donations to various worthy organizations. I feel your paper cuts. And I have some very tedious, time-consuming tips to reduce them. Aren’t you lucky!

My hate affair with paper requests started long ago. A friend’s mother had passed away, and I donated a grove of trees in her name, via a lovely organization that plants them in Los Angeles. Subsequently, the lovely organization that plants trees, TREES for god’s sake, sent me letters at least once a month. So once a month I made pleading phone requests for them to stop. After two years, I finally reached the president of the organization by phone. The mailings finally stopped after that, but sadly by then so had my interest in helping the group.

A couple years later, the dead tree letters were long gone, but others had filled their place, and then some. I couldn’t take it any more, so I collected a pile for about two months. Then I called every single charity in the pile to ask to be removed from the mailing list. It took forfreakingever, but it worked pretty well. Within a couple of months the weekly pile had dwindled to about a third of its former proportions. Thing is, these dwindlers were groups I had never donated to before; I had just ended up on their mailing lists from other groups selling or renting my information.

Incidentally, a charity worker who spoke under pain of death or embarrassment admitted that museums were huge culprits in the information-selling racket. Then it gets positively creepy: your name is analyzed for its cultural, ethnic, gender, etc. association, and then bundled off to organizations that might resonate with your perceived background. Hence, a friend with a Polish last name, who is also a member of several museums, ended up on a lot of lists for Catholic charities. Which is fine, except she’s Jewish.

I get why museums do it; times are tough for the arts and it’s an easy way to raise funds. And I get why charities do it – one person explained that it’s a cheap method of advertising for groups that can’t afford any other form. And that even though everyone you know hates receiving them, somebody’s biting. A friend told me that the charity she works for actually gets enough money back to make it worth sending them out. So all those wasteful paper mailings are more successful than emails.

My paper pile was smaller, but still stubborn. The groups I did contribute to were still sending me periodic old-school paper requests, along with the thank you notes and other assorted folderol (calendars, magnets).

As an aside, can I vent about how annoying it is to get requests for money in the same printed breath as a thank you? What’s the thought process behind it – that I won’t notice that I just donated? That I’ll be so happy to be thanked I’ll do it again right away for more approbation? Do you say, “Thank you for the birthday check Grandma, now could you please give me a birthday check?” No, no you don’t. It’s not clever; it’s rude.

Anyway, back to my original point: the paper mail onslaught, and the lengths to which I will go to stop it. Obsessive lengths, yes. But ultimately, successful ones.

First off, in looking at the ratings of various groups on a charity evaluation website, Charity Navigator, I learned that giving larger donations to fewer charities is a more sound practice. As they put it: “Spreading your money among multiple organizations not only results in your mail box filling up with more appeals, it also diminishes the possibility of any of those groups bringing about substantive change as each charity is wasting a percentage of your gift on processing expenses for that gift.”

So I made a smaller list of groups that would get larger amounts, and drafted an email to prospective new recipients:

Hello, I would like to make a donation, on the condition that you never send me any regular mail. I am an environmental activist and it’s a huge waste of paper and resources. If I receive any paper mail, the donations will cease. An annual email request is fine.

Is there any way for you to guarantee this? If so, please let me know and I’ll be happy to make my donation, and to continue to donate in the future.

I keep track of the list so I can follow up on that promise of yearly donations to everyone who keeps up their end of the bargain. (The IRS requires a written acknowledgement of any donation of $250 or more, so those letters are the one acceptable exception. But I still prefer to print out emailed acknowledgements; no envelope.)

Big shocker, everyone readily agreed to the arrangement. It didn’t always pan out though. One group sent me a postcard thanking me for my donation, with a tear-off reply for me to choose my mail list options, something I had already done online, by phone, and by email. Sigh.

Another time I received a signed book written by an excellent organization’s even more excellent founder. After another round of emails and calls begging to be taken off the list, I received another signed copy of the same book. No waste there. Signed sigh.

It’s hard to follow through on the threat to stop donating to groups I admire. But there are so many other admirable groups that after giving two or three more chances -  “I mean it this time. I really mean it. No, seriously…” like a permissive parent – I move on.

After all of this slogging, the paper appeals have declined precipitously, to maybe one a week. Even during the holidays. Almost impressive, isn’t it?

If all else fails, but you can’t bring yourself to refuse a beloved group, give anonymously. Network For Good‘s online giving system offers that fabulous option. And if you don’t care about a tax deduction, throw cash in the donation jars of any local groups you come across. No one will ever know where to send a thank you card!

Sites and stuff for your perusal:

Network for Good

Here are a slew of Charity Navigator tips for donating.

A couple other sites that check out charities:

• Guidestar
• Charity Watch

Here’s an opt-out that’s mostly for junk mail and other groups that have registered with them, which may help a tiny bit: Direct Marketing Association Choice

Here are some tips from the Better Business Bureau.

Donation Dashboard is fun; it comes up with a list of suggested organizations based on your preferences.

There’s an old song that keeps popping up in my mind when I write these little eco tips. It’s from a musical called “The Pajama Game” that I probably saw once on television as a child, and never since. The movie starred Doris Day as a worker in a pajama factory, and John Raitt as a corporate lackey. Doris and her colleagues wanted a small raise, but John was trying to prevent it. I think. Anyway, the union came up with a catchy song to demonstrate their position. It’s called “Seven and a Half Cents,” and the lyrics go a little something exactly like this:

Seven and a half cents doesn’t mean a heck of a lot.

Seven and a half cents doesn’t mean a thing.

But give it to me every hour, forty hours every week,

That’s enough to have me living like a king.

I figured it out!

And with a pencil and a pad, the workers do figure it out. Five years equals $852.74, with some overtime. As the song then explains,

That’s enough for me to get

An automatic washing machine,

A year’s supply of gasoline,

Carpeting for the living room,

A vacuum instead of a blasted broom,

Not to mention a forty-inch television set!

Accounting for inflation, that amount today would be $86,663.97. (I figured it out! With an online inflation calculator!) Not only are unions spunky and clever, they make mathematical equations fun. I really have to watch that movie again.

Anyway, it keeps running around my brain while I write about ways to save a gallon of water here or a gallon of gas there, because even though I’m writing about seemingly negligible savings to earth and wallet, they do add up.

I remember way back in the day when I used to get facials at a fancy salon, in the benighted hopes of attaining perfect, or rather less imperfect, skin. Those hopes were raised even higher by salon products that were practically guaranteed to deliver the Fountain of Youth in a tube. I always balked at the price, something like a million dollars an ounce. The two lovely, ageless owners of the salon would soothe me, speaking in vaguely Italian-Countess accents, ‘Oh, but they last forever, especially if you cut them open when you think you are done.’ I didn’t understand. They explained that one should cut the bottom of the tube to get another week of use out of the magical product.

Well if two fabulous demi-royals who catered to movie stars were to suggest it, who was I to naysay? And once I started doing that, I found I could cut the tubes of every other product and do likewise. It can get a bit messy, but for another week of use, it’s worth it. That’s another week kept from the landfill and a new purchase. Cosmetics, toothpaste, moisturizer, if it’s in a tube I cut the crimp and think of the countesses.

And before I even get out the scissors, I try to use less on the way there.
 
 
Here’s a link that points out how we pretty much overuse everything, for no good reason. See where you can save enough for a color TV! The Simple Dollar – The Cost of Overuse

And here’s the Pajama Game song – 7 1/2 Cents, courtesy of however long is lasts up on You Tube.

Sorry if it gets stuck in your head.
 

Back in my cigarette butt clean-up days, I came across endless amounts of dog crap. I didn’t touch it, even double-gloved, but I obsessed about it. As I read up about the problem, I learned way more than I ever wanted to. The facts are enough to make you sick. Dog excrement isn’t just a nuisance, it’s a factory for E coli, among other unwelcome bacteria. And all that un-picked-up-poop eventually washes away down the drain to the nearest stream, river, lake, or ocean, to spread its toxins wherever the current takes it. Since storm drains often aren’t attached to treatment facilities, that’s a whole lot of untreated offal we’re talking about.

A friend of mine had a date with a man who didn’t pick up after his dog, to her horror. She made it clear that was a deal-breaker. I appreciate her willingness to go Lysistrata on his sorry hide. But it’s also shocking to me to see daily evidence of how many perfectly nice dog owners don’t think it’s a big deal. Or who forget to do it every now and then, when it’s inconvenient. Since one gram of waste contains 23 million fecal coliform bacteria, one neglected scoop can do massive damage. Multiplied by all the dogs in the world (at least 78 million in the US alone, according to the Humane Society) and we’re pretty much swimming in muck.

According to Stormwater Manager’s Resource Center (SMRC), “For watersheds of up to twenty-square miles draining to small coastal bays, two to three days of droppings from a population of about 100 dogs would contribute enough bacteria and nutrients to temporarily close a bay to swimming and shellfishing (US EPA, 1993).”

But wait, there’s more! Puppy poo – I’m running dangerously low on synonyms – is not just a beach closer, it’s a lake killer. SMRC continues: “Pet waste can also be a factor in eutrophication of lakes. The release of nutrients from the decay of pet waste promotes weed and algae growth, limiting light penetration and the growth of aquatic vegetation. This in turn can reduce oxygen levels in the water, affecting fish and other aquatic organisms.” In other less highfalutin’ words, doggie doo can choke the life out of a beautiful body of water.

I want to create a yard sign that reads: “Dear dog owners: what you leave on the lawn will end up in your water. Bottoms up!” Please feel free to steal this idea, just send me a couple of signs.

The Jefferson County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office had an even greater idea. “In response to a growing number of poop piles” they launched a catchy campaign that Rachel Maddow recently honored with “Best New Thing in the World” status: There is no poop fairy.

Seriously people, what’s it going to take? Can you imagine if people just poured paint and motor oil down storm drains in front of their neighbors, without shame? What is this, the ‘70s?

Someone, somewhere – and apologies for not recalling who or where – had a great idea that everyone who picks up after their dog can also pick up one piece of trash on their walk as well. Just one. Think of it as an amends for all those poops you left behind!

I know the compostable bags are more expensive than plastic, but if you can afford it, make the switch.

For people who just can’t bare touching the products of their dog’s bowels, they can let their pet go for it in the backyard and shovel the results into a Doggie Dooley, a waste receptacle buried in the earth that lets the poop decay into an innocuous muck. The added benefit is that it creates compost, rather than using a painful number of plastic bags for discarding the doo.

Another good method to reduce dog dookie: spay and neuter your babies, so they don’t make babies that make big messes.

Now here’s a delightful coda after all this grossitude: I told my niece about this column, in all the dirty details. She was duly (dooley?) horrified, then confessed that she’s never cleaned up after her dog before, but effective immediately, she’s going to do so from now on. One small scoop for a Cavalier King Charles, one large scoop for puppykind!

The Straight Poop:

More disturbing facts are provided by New England’s Blue Ocean Society for Marine Preservation.

Here are sources for the other facts I cited, along with more nauseating information. Good times.

USA Today – Dog waste poses threat to water

EPA – Pest Waste Management

Storm Water Manager’s Resource Center – Pollution Prevention: Animal Waste Collection

I lived in apartments for 20 years without a washing machine or dryer in the building. So I got used to my local laundromat and its radio station offering top 40 hits from the 50s. I also got used to my friend Zelda’s gracious offer to let me do laundry at her house. Every week or so I’d bring my loads over, and we’d head out for lunch. It was all very civilized.

Then a few years ago I lucked into an apartment with everything I could ever dream of. Yes, a washer and dryer, not just in the building, but in the unit. THE UNIT. It’s a mudroom as a matter of fact. I had a mudroom! Luxury! I figured I’d be washing and drying clothes round the clock in my wild, debauched enjoyment of these long-pined-for appliances. But then the opposite happened, sort of. I wash my clothes as often as I used to, but I don’t dry them anymore. Not in the dryer anyway. The glorious mudroom came with a wire rack hanging above the machines. I found that I could put my delicate clothes on hangers and hang them on the rack. Then I found that I could hang everything else up there too. Even my sheets.

I visited Rome in my semi-youth, and was taken by the sight of laundry hanging on lines outside the windows of glorious ancient buildings. I loved the mix of the historical and quotidian, and I like to pretend that I’m continuing the tradition, in my 1920s apartment. Hey, in Los Angeles that counts as ancient.

The upside to this arrangement is that everything lasts way longer than if I dried them in the machine. The downside is that everything lasts way longer than if I dried them in the machine. My clothes are old and boring and outdated. But they’re in really good shape.

If you too are one of the lucky ones with a washer and dryer in your home, and you have room for a drying line across the room, or even better, outside, I’m telling you, give it a shot, it’s kind of addictive. But I hope you like your clothes, because they’re going to be around for a while. Now you can afford all the eco-fashions that usually break the bank!

Here’s a fact that may help you go au naturel with your load: if your laundry has stains, the application of heat, via dryers, will only set the stains further.

Same goes for hot water in the washing machine. In fact, let’s focus on that side of the mudroom for a moment, since the washing machine is another big drain (sorry) on water usage. I’m sure you know this, but just in case you’re passing this information onto someone else: be sure to wash only full loads, or at the very least, set the water level to match the size.

If you can switch to an energy star front-loading washer, then bully for you, I’m jealous. According to the California Energy Commission, “Front loaders cut water use by nearly 40 percent. A typical top-loading washer uses about 40 gallons of water for each full load. In contrast, a full-size horizontal axis clothes washer uses only 20 to 25 gallons.” Be sure to freecycle the old machine to some poor laundryless sod.

For those of us who can’t change out their machines, a lot of smaller steps can be taken. Like turning off the hot water. It doesn’t clean clothes better; in fact, it’s harder on them. Cold water makes clothes less prone to shrinking, elastic degrading, color bleeding or fading. I sound like a detergent commercial.

Speaking of detergent, if you haven’t already made the switch, use plant-based products that are biodegradable and easier on the environment (and your skin). And step away from the chlorine bleach. Plenty of safer alternatives abound these days. Good ol’ baking soda and vinegar do a world of good to white loads. (You might also want to rethink buying white in the first place.) Don’t overuse the detergent; it actually makes matters worse. Spots of detergent can get stuck on clothing and wear away fabric. Buy laundry soap in boxes, not plastic bottles. It’s easier to recycle, and the powder arguably provides better cleaning. You can even try reusable ionic laundry balls – no soap required. Soap nuts are another cool option; they’re seed pods that can be composted after the wash. It’s trippy.

If the idea of switching to cold water fills you with a cold dread, just try reduction instead of a full renunciation. Use it for every other white load and see how it works. I still use warm on occasion for sheets and light towels. It’s a thing, I can’t get over it just yet. Hot water still works better to reduce bacteria and viruses, so when cold season hits your house, it’s a good idea to turn on the heat.

Back to the dry side of the equation, if you can’t stand the feel of slightly crisp towels, throw your air-dried clothes in the dryer for five minutes for that warm ‘n fuzzy feeling. Laundry balls for the dry cleaner eliminate the need for anti-static sheets. On the rare occasion I’ve got to use the dryer, I throw in clean tennis balls to increase the dryer’s efficiency.

If you’re going to a laundromat or friend’s house, I feel for you, my compadres. But even you can take a few items out – the delicates – and hang them at home to dry over the tub or shower door. It’s like ancient Rome in your bathroom!

Pretty much the only time I use the dryer anymore is when a friend comes over to do a load. It’s all very civilized.

Sites and facts galore:

Here’s where I got that info about top loading washers.

Here are some fun tips on the amount of soap to use, the amount of washing your clothes need, and the temperature.

Too much soap can damage your clothes and cause mold problems, skin irritation or worse. Planet Green, by Discovery, has a very good tip on laundry detergent use:

Mark the cap. The recommended use lines are sometimes hard to read. Using a black permanent marker, draw a line at the halfway mark and you’ll always be able to see how much you should use.

If you can’t give up the ol’ heat tosser, you can at least reuse your dryer lint.

My favorite tip is lining plant pots to keep the dirt from falling out. If you have friends with little pets like mice or guinea pigs, hand the lint over for nesting material; they’ll love it.

No, this isn’t about dating aliens. Yes, we all know the color of Valentine’s Day is red. Red roses, red hearts decorating greeting cards, red boxes of chocolate, red balloons. Except for that last one – has any woman in the history of the world been excited to get a bouquet of red balloons? Just checking.

I don’t want to get too bah humbug on the whole Valentinian industry. After all, any holiday that promotes the buying, gifting, and eating of chocolates is going to get a big gold star in my book. But I would like to promote some options of a more sustainable nature, while yes, stomping all over the environmentally unfriendly choices.

Let’s start with chocolate, and believe me, this hurts me at least as much as it hurts you. The reality is, chocolate has a long, horrifying history of exploitation, war and corruption that rivals blood diamonds. So before you reach for the silk box, you’ll want to research the origins. Who wants their gift of love soaked in the blood of veritable slaves? (Speaking of diamonds…)

Fortunately, some of today’s gourmet chocolatiers are as committed to fair trade as they are to fanciness. I’m not vouching for any of them here; it seems every minute another small producer is being gobbled up by a multinational corporation. But I will provide a link below that you can use to investigate further. I’m going to do my best to research the matter, one bonbon at a time.

Then there’s cards. Do we really have to go into this? Get cards printed on recycled and recyclable paper, with plant-based inks. Or better yet, make your own. On recycled and recyclable paper, with plant-based inks. Done.

Now onto flowers for your Green Valentine. They are beautiful. They are traditional. They are also kind of a bummer. 90% of roses sold in the U.S. come from Colombia and Equador. That’s a long trip and a whole lot of resources to get from the earth to your sweetheart’s hands. Colombia’s use of environmentally damaging pesticides, and systematic forest-clearing for rose-growing, make the crop even more ecologically unsound. So you have a few options. Buy flowers you know are grown in the U.S. Farmer’s market vendors can tell you exactly where their bouquets are grown, and what was used on the soil. Even better, buy flowering plants. What says enduring love better -  a plant that you nurture and watch as it grows, or a bunch of drooping wilted flowers you have to toss in the composter in a week? You do toss them in the composter, don’t you?

Living plants aren’t just more metaphorically appropriate. They help clean the air of toxins. That most romantic of government agencies, NASA, came out with a study in 1989 about plants’ ability to filter indoor air. (You’ll find the link below.)

Breathing clean air – isn’t it romantic?

Fun facts and figures:

Here’s the link to slavery-free chocolate that I promised you, but I can’t tell when it was last updated, so please research further if you find a brand you like listed:

Here’s the most depressing book about chocolate I could ever imagine.

Bitter Chocolate: The Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet, by Carol Off.

Here’s a list of the plants, and a summary of the study that provided them:

Here’s a review of the NASA study.

Here’s the original NASA report. I couldn’t get through it, but more power to you if you can.

B. C. Wolverton, the first author of the NASA study, wrote a book you may want to peruse: ”How to Grow Fresh Air: 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office.”

Day 1

Next to Blick Art Materials, home to the great GM Jeff.
200 butts in 30 minutes

Included in that number are 4 straws, an armful of Styrofoam peanuts, assorted plastic bits, a lighter, a cigarette box and plastic wrapper.

Day 2

200 butts collected in 30 minutes during a stop on a bike ride.

I rode through a really fancy neighborhood, spotting only one or two butts a block, but other trash was strewn about. Plastic water bottles, energy drinks, Starbucks cups and straws. I stopped at first, but soon realized if I stop every time I see litter I’ll be stopping 10-50 times a block. No matter how nice the neighborhood.

Then I hit a shabbier area, and found a sea of trash in front of an empty lot. I hit 200 in 1/2 hour, including bottle caps and piles of other small plastic trash. Lots of plastic cigarette holders; apparently they’re a one-use kind of thing. People were slightly less freaked out by me here, and even said hello when they walked by. Three people walked by with their dogs, but with no plastic baggies in sight. So much dog poop abounded, I’m pretty sure it was a neighborhood bag-free zone. One woman saw me and moved her dog as he was about to go, I’m pretty sure because I was there. I was about to stop at 170 but then hit a mother lode at the curb, an inch away from a trashcan. Thirty just sitting there in a pile, waiting for me.

On the ride home I spied garbage everywhere. It’s impossible to just ride blissfully anymore, I can’t see the trees for the trash. I was depressed by this for a while, then came around to the understanding – paraphrasing that well-known saying – that I have to accept the things I can’t change, and change the things I can. Finding the wisdom to know the difference is going to take some doing.

Day 3

220 butts and other small plastic debris
20 minutes

At one point I felt like I was on an Easter egg hunt in Hell. Instead of finding pretty dyed eggs or foil-wrapped chocolates, I was collecting little toxic bonbons. But then I thought that every single fetid item represented a saved fish, or an albatross not choking on a plastic cap, and I felt a bit better. (I felt even more better after my hands underwent a mini Silkwood shower back home. If you’ve seen the movie you’ll get the reference. If you haven’t, go watch it already, it’s fantastic. And yes, I know ‘more better’ isn’t proper grammar, Dad.)

I didn’t want to sacrifice any of my tote bags to the cause, so I reused a bunch of plastic bags that had previously held raisins, cookies, tortillas, and the like. That only added to the crazy look, of course. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound of nutso.

This pick up was in front of a place called the Log Cabin, which is used for many 12-step meetings. When I got home I called the AA Central Office in downtown Los Angeles. The guy on the phone was very appreciative of my efforts, but then when I asked whether a request could be made that smoking meeting-goers could stop littering their cigarette butts, he responded with: “Good luck sweetheart.” So much for that idea.

I thought 220 in 20 minutes was an impressive number, until I saw this post on Danielle’s website. 20 minutes: 2026 butts.

Nice Danielle! (Show-off.)

Day 4

I notice that the only people who say hi are valets. Maybe they are nicer people. Maybe they are used to weirdos. Maybe they like that I’m cleaning their areas.

I hit 220 and started to turn back at 25 minutes, then kept hitting nasty jackpots as I walked home. Final count for the day: 324.

I started to feel kind of ill, and didn’t know if it was my imagination, or maybe the disgust has entered my body.

I understand why people break this kind of clean-up up. It’s too repulsive doing it every day. If I had to keep it up past 2080, I’d burn out.

Day 5

After feelng so icked out yesterday, I was going to skip today, but after yoga class I was so sweaty I figured it would be a waste of a good dirty outfit. So I took to the streets around the Hollywood YMCA, heading toward an area I knew would yield results, and I was rewarded, in unusual ways. In front of a homeless shelter a couple blocks over, I collected most of the butts of the day. I also encountered several friendly people who didn’t try to avoid me. One man said, “It takes a gold heart to pick up cigarette butts,” which made me feel like a million bucks. When I explained I was trying to make up for my past butt littering, he said, “Whoa, I’d have to clean them up forever,” and we both laughed. One shy gentleman walked by before saying hello to me, almost under his breath. After I hit 20 minutes, I headed back toward my car. As I passed by the shelter entrance, the security guy stationed there thanked me. Caught off guard, I quickly replied, “My pleasure!” and then wondered why the hell I would say that. But really, today it kind of was.

Day 6

I double-gloved it this time. Two on one hand. Looks just as crazy, but feels like safety.

Day 7

Seriously considered adopting a Bait Tank rather than finishing this. Throw money at the problem! But instead, more ICK.

Day 8

293 left to go, hallelujah.

Oddly, this time I found dozens upon dozens – scores! – of field-stripped butts. Like squared-off puffs of pollen from a toxic tree.

Day 9

DONE DONE DONE

I’ve gotten a smidge OCD. On a walk, I start to count all the butts and bits that I pass. Even when I’m not picking anything up – no glove, no love – I can’t stop. A walk around my block comes up with numbers that make me crazy. Would you try it? Walk around your block and see what you count. And if that number is zero, please let me know where you live. I want to visit, and get a little respite from all the damn counting.

I regularly see lit cigarettes thrown out of cars. As my previous profilee, Mark Armen, has pointed out, butts are the number one roadside litter, so everyone has seen them get thrown out. After so many trillions, are we inured to them?

Here’s where I must admit to a raging case of hypocrisy. You see, I used to smoke. Off and on in high school, college, and a while after that. (My parents don’t know about this, so please don’t tell them.) And I remember putting cigarette butts out wherever I felt like it, including the beach. After all, it was sand; it was like one big ashtray. I know now how disgusting that is, but at the time, I didn’t think about it. Or if I did give it a passing thought, I was one of those people who thought butts were biodegradable.

So after talking to Danielle, after joining Sara for a beach clean-up, and after interviewing Mark, creator of the BaitTank cigarette butt collector featured here previously, I realized I had to do something to make up for my past behavior. An amends, if you will.

First I tried to figure out the number of butts I littered. Roughly a pack a week thrown out on the ground or in the sand = 20 cigarettes. 20 X 2 years = 2080. It’s been so long since I’ve been a rabid anti-smoker that I really have no idea if that number is low or high, so I went with it.

I told Danielle and Sara of my plan, and they were as supportive and encouraging as you’d expect. However, Mark Armen said, “Wait, don’t you need to pick up two butts for every one you threw out? Isn’t that how penance works?” Maybe, but as I am not a Catholic, I wouldn’t know about that. I stuck with my original plan.

I learned a few things on my first day out:

• People are kind of freaked out to see me cleaning up cigarette butts. They avoid looking at me, as if I’m a crazy person. Or maybe as if I’d ask them to join me.

• I should wear two gloves, not one. Somehow the bag-holding hand gets just as dirty as the crap-picking hand. Also, two gloves serve to look slightly less insane. See above.

• I should pull back my long hair into a ponytail. Bending over a hundred times or so, without having a clean hand to push it back behind my ears, was a pain in the ass, and also added to the crazy lady look by the end of the half hour. Seriously, the bangs were right out of “There’s Something About Mary.” Which I didn’t know til I got home and saw myself in the mirror.

• People can be really cool.

I was working a greenway between the street and the sidewalk, next to an art store a few blocks from my home. A kind valet parker saw me working, and, perhaps since he’d seen me previously, looking normal-er, he wasn’t scared to talk to me. He showed me the cause of the greenway litter. In the alley behind the art store, the dumpster was located under their loading dock. Unfortunately, there was a gap between the dumpster and the dock, so every time the workers threw out the trash, some fell to the ground. Additionally, the dumpster’s lid was always open, so wind would blow light debris away, onto the little greenway of grossness.

So after picking up butt 200, I screwed up my courage and stepped inside the art store to ask to speak to the manager about the dumpster problem. He stepped up, and looked at me a little warily. Note to self: take off single yellow glove, throw out bag of refuse, and comb unruly Mary hair before trying to talk to anyone other than self. Anyway, he heard me out politely, and said he would tell the GM (General Manager) about it. I asked who that was, and if I could get the number. I also offered to leave my name and number, but was declined, again politely. So I left, with Jeff the GM’s card, thinking, oh great I’m going to have to do my spiel all over again tomorrow when he’s on his shift and he’s going to be a jerk, and should I come in or do it by phone, which will be more effective? And are Saturdays busy? He probably won’t be able to take the call, ugh, why do I bother… Stuff like that.

So the next morning, bright and early at 11:00 a.m., I called up GM Jeff, who quickly interrupted my pleasant prepared statement with, “I got the message loud and clear.” So the other fellow had spoken with him after all. That was nice to hear. Maybe looking like a kook helped, who knows. But “loud and clear?” Did that mean I should shut up already? I steeled myself for a brush-off, but instead he went on to say that he already cleaned up the area, and was looking into ways to make sure it doesn’t happen anymore. He said their underground garage has a similar problem with customers littering, even though there are two trashcans down there. He was going to look into that too.

When I mentioned that his workers smoke in front of the building with no trashcans nearby, and wondered if that was a city issue, he said he hadn’t thought of that before, but he’d call the city about installing a can on that corner, and tell the workers to use it.

When I noted that the Styrofoam peanuts they discard could instead be collected and taken over to the shipping store in the mini-mall across the street for reuse, he said he’d set aside a big bag for them right away. I offered to do it, and save his employees the hassle, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He added the company doesn’t use them much anymore anyway; they use the more popular plastic bags full of air now. That’s a battle for another day.

When I started to ask whether all the cardboard boxes in the dumpster could be recycled instead, he noted that when he first started working there he wanted to recycle the cardboard too, but then saw that local guys were coming by several times a day to go through the trash and recycle them, so he left it to them.

I had been practically writhing in dread of calling GM Jeff to follow through with all of this, expecting a fruitless talk that would fill me with resentment. Instead, he was so responsive, even proactive, that he made my day. I swear I nearly got weepy.

I offered to help with all of it, in any way I could, and he took my name, number, and email to get in touch, but frankly, he seems to have things completely in hand. I want to go buy art supplies (from Blick Art Materials, also available online!) just to thank him.

I could go off on a tear here about conscious capitalism, and how employees who show they care and make a concerted effort to solve problems are a company’s most valuable assets, and if corporations only understood that ultimately it was a lot cheaper to act decently than to greenwash people with advertising and lobbying and lawsuits, we’d all happily support them, but that’s already there in the subtext, right?

Besides, I have to tend to my own hypocrisy before attacking anyone else’s. Next up, my clean-up diary.

Incidentally, this train of people I’ve been profiling – Sara telling me about Danielle telling me about Mark – reminds me of that old shampoo commercial, ‘I told two friends, and then they told two friends, and then so on, and so on, and so on…’ The internet works like shampoo!

Okay, back to Mark. Growing up in Southern California, he was always out on the beach. “As a kid, at the end of the day I’d go pick up trash all by myself,” he says. “People thought I was a weirdo.”

“I went to business school with the fine focus of trying to look at how business can help the environment instead of degrading it.”

He wanted to be a marine biologist when he grew up, but when he got grown, he decided he wanted to start his own business. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, that business would be, but he knew it had to be related to the ocean. “I went to business school with the fine focus of trying to look at how business can help the environment instead of degrading it.” Challenged by that motivation, he started in his present job, “working with plastics and glass recycling, and trying to reengineer recycling in this country, because it’s broken.”

In November, when the first rains hit Los Angeles and clean off the streets, it all ends up in the ocean. It’s known as the ‘first flush.’ (see Mark’s videos below) “It’s a nightmare. You would not believe it,” he says. Two years ago, Mark was walking the beach right after that first flush, “and I was coming over little stuff – bottle caps, cigarette butts, drinking straws, tampon applicators, etc. Here I am working every day trying to recycle a big plastic bottle or an ink cartridge or a cell phone, and what I’m seeing on the beach are all the little things that get in the drain. That led me to litter research, finding out that the majority of the stuff that’s littered is less than four inches in size.”

The majority of that is cigarette butts. According to a study from Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butt litter costs our cities and businesses four billion dollars in clean-up and prevention, and those are just direct costs. 57% of all cigarette butts are littered. They make up 38% percent of litter on roadsides and washing up on the beach.

“On top of that, I read some research out of San Diego State University that the toxins in cigarette butts have the potential to kill marine life, fish in particular,” Mark notes. “That set me off because I love fish, I love the ocean, I think we need to protect it, not only ecologically but economically as well. It’s an economic driver. That got me thinking about what we can do upstream. Beach clean-ups are great; they get people behind a common purpose. That’s what Sara and Danielle do. They motivate me and propel me to do what I do. But they’ll be the first ones to tell you that it’s not the end-all solution. You’re going to get back there tomorrow morning and it’s going to be there again, unfortunately.”

Save some fish. Feed me butts.

So he created the BaitTank. With a (reused) surfboard fin on top, and friendly information on its side, the Tank attracts attention and holds thousands of butts.

“I found some research that said that attractive, salient, cigarette receptacles actually attract more litter. So much in our industry is negative. How do we make it positive?” He thought that if a littered cigarette butt can kill a fish, a collected cigarette butt could save a fish. “So instead of talking about all the water pollution, and the trillions of butts in our waterways, we can talk about the fish we’re saving by doing something about it.”

The motto he hit on: Save some fish. Feed me butts.

He pitched his “fun little back-of-the-napkin idea” around the state, and people in Santa Cruz and Capitola signed off on it. On August 1, 2010, the first BaitTank was installed.

Wrightsville beach cleaner-upper Danielle Richardet helped land some tanks in North Carolina. “The reason I like them so much is that they convey a message for people to understand why littering butts is wrong,” she says. “I think they have a higher success rate than the typical receptacle. They stick out; you want to stop and see what they’re about.” And you want to feed them.

Mark’s growing green business now has over 50 tanks installed across the country. According to the people who maintain them, not only have they decreased cigarette butt litter somewhere between 70-80%, but they’ve also educated and enhanced the community.

“People love them,” Mark enthuses. “They decrease employee workload, which is extremely difficult to put a value on but there is a value there. We used to have public works people walking around sweeping up butts. Now the public works department has even acknowledged that they can work on more important maintenance projects. This isn’t just a tree-hugging thing, this is a money thing.”

He’s even meeting with tobacco companies to get them to sign on to ‘adopting’ Tanks. “I’ve always wanted to create for profit businesses that actually help the environment. Profit can drive sustainability, not only environmental sustainability but financial sustainability. The better I do, the broader impact I can have.” One butt-saved fishie at a time.

Check out Mark’s BaitTanks & Mark’s Blog.
 
And here’s a great advocacy and research group: CigWaste
 
Mark’s “First Flush” Videos
 


 

In 2010, Danielle read about the Oceana organization’s Ocean Heroes Nominees, and Sara was one of them. Danielle voted for Sara to win the honor. She followed Sara on her Daily Ocean blog, and when Danielle and her family went to Los Angeles for a family trip a couple months later, they joined Sara on a beach clean-up.

In Santa Monica, Danielle saw some cool, fin-topped cigarette litter receptacles called BaitTanks, created by Mark Armen, another friend of Sara’s. (More on him and them soon.) She posted pictures of the BaitTanks on her Facebook page. “I texted my friend that I want to help with the cigarette litter issue – ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to help,’” Danielle recalls.

A week later she was on the beach in Wrightsville NC, cleaning up cigarette butts. In 100 days, she, family members, and friends have picked up 35,104 cigarettes, in addition to other litter.

“An estimated 4.5 trillion cigarettes are littered every single year,” she notes. “How many years have cigarettes been around? The number of smokers is going down in our country but growing worldwide.”

It’s a common misconception that cigarette filters are made of cotton. Actually it’s cellulose acetate, a plastic derivative that, like any other plastic, degrades but never goes away. The filter contains byproducts from the cigarette smoke that went through it, including arsenic, lead, cadmium, formaldehyde, and 400 other chemicals. When littered, it all leaches into the environment.

Danielle already had a blog called ‘It Starts With Me,’ which she had been using to post eco-friendly tips. From August 2010 onward, the site evolved to record her daily beach counts and related musings.

Her story was so compelling, it won the Brita FilterForGood Film Project. As a result, a former winner at Sundance directed the terrific short film of her story: “Our Daily Ocean: A Story of Butts.”

The clean-ups have led to changes in the Richardet’s lives, big and small. “It’s one thing to hear about something, but another to actually see it happening,” she notes. “We had already started reducing our plastic waste – my husband and I wouldn’t accept straws when we went out. But our kids got them; it wasn’t something we were focused on, eliminating it from our kids’ routines. But once we were picking up so many – the last time I went out I picked up 60 straws in twenty minutes – that’s such a waste, and something that’s so easy for people to stop using. I don’t even think we were a month into the litter project when we all stopped using straws. The kids haven’t used straws in over a year. A company sent us glass straws, which are really cool.”

With prompting, Danielle mentions a bunch of other suggestions for reducing waste that otherwise ends up in landfills. She often saves water by sharing showers with any one of her three little kids. “I very rarely get showers to myself,” she says, laughing. They use bar shampoo rather than bottled; “they can’t waste it.” And she stopped using conditioner entirely. The family rarely buys anything contained in plastic anymore; she bakes cookies, tortillas, and banana bread instead of buying them. “We cancelled our trash service because we didn’t have that much,” she notes. “We have a 32-gallon trashcan that we fill halfway maybe once a month.”

Her cigarette clean-up work has led her to present her findings, all 30+thousand of them, at Wrightsville town hall meetings, pressing for a smoking ban on the beaches. “I never thought I’d be at a town hall meeting or anything,” she says. “I thought the people on the committee or Surfrider or somebody else would take my stuff and say ‘look what she did.’ I didn’t expect to be speaking at anything. It’s turned into something bigger than I ever thought it would be. That’s how an activist is born.” She then demurred. “That’s a strong word for me.”

I respectfully disagree. If that isn’t active, what is?