Save Our Shores California Coastal Cleanup Day 2011

http://www.saveourshores.org/
Save Our Shores, Santa Cruz
California Coastal Cleanup Day
September 17, 2011

Save Our Shores from Santa Cruz, California helps coordinate 4,584 volunteers working at eighty-one cleanup sites in Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties.Together they help to keep over 17,000 pounds of pollution from entering the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, including over 23,000 cigarette butts, over 6000 bottle caps, and more than 4300 plastic bags.

This is a gritty, point of view video of my first beach cleanup as part of the California Coastal Cleanup Day. Three hours (condensed down to 15 minutes), of picking up litter with one hand while filming it with the other on Marina State Beach in California. FYI, I get soaked at the 2:10 minute mark and the elusive little polystyrene foam chase across the beach is at the 5:00 minute mark. Whoever says eliminating polystyrene foam food containers won't do anything to stop the litter problem has never tried to catch a little piece of Styrofoam blowing in the wind - it is this "elusiveness" that makes the foam such a menace!

The video is broken down into the 4 emotions I went through that morning: ACTION (1:04) - feeling alive, energized and ready to change the World and make a difference; OPTIMISM (5:00) - being one of the many thousands of volunteers cleaning beaches that morning in Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties and among the tens of thousands all along the California Coastline, and the Hundreds of Thousands of people Worldwide who were also participating in the International Coastal Cleanup Day that same morning; DESPAIR (8:44) - suddenly finding myself alone on an isolated part of the beach, finding Styrofoam, pieces of plastic, foil wrappers, cigarette butts, balloons, glass, bottles, bottle caps, all litter that had been there on the beach for a long time. RESOLVE (12:38) - picking up one piece at a time if that is what it takes, determined to do what is required to change the world, so there will be no more polystyrene foam or plastic bags on the beach, knowing I am not alone, that we are not alone, in this endeavor.

Congratulations Save Our Shores, you are doing an awesome job saving the Oceans!

Video filmed using a Kodak Zi8 pocket video camera and a BlackBerry Bold. Video edited using Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum. Music composed using Acid Music Studio 8.0

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Save Our Shores
• Ocean
• Environment
• Polystyrene
• Styrofoam
• EPS
• Litter
• Cleanup
• Pollution
• Monterey Bay
• Marine Sanctuary
• Coast
• Beach
• SB 568
• Santa Cruz
• California
• Marine Life