Saturday, September 15, 2007

Keep our beaches clean!



Today was a designated as a trash pick-up day on Pensacola Beach. Unfortunately only a dozen volunteers showed up at Casino Beach where Sandy Johnston, executive director of the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce, coordinated the event.

Two volunteers appeared at Park East where Glenn Griffith, a coordinator with the Escambia County Community Redevelopment Agency was the Lone Ranger with trash bags for us. A big thank you to all those who turned out to keep our sugar-white sand beautiful.

Though trash on the beach is not a laughing matter, it is sometimes interesting to compare notes and see who had the most interesting piece of trash: mine was a spent shotgun shell.

Top awards for most unusual:

Size 44-46 men's 'tighty-whitey' style underwear (verrrrry scary)
"Autopsy-type" tubing (even more scary!)
Man's swim trunks with half-empty cup of coffee on top (no one was around - I checked!)

Most picked-up:

Bottle caps
Cigarette butts. (I hope I never run into the guy who's smoking all those Tiparillos / cigarillos. We are gonna have words!)
Plastic food wrappers/containers

Most dangerous:

Glass beer bottles and broken glass bottles
Rusted nails and tent stakes

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful still. I noticed tire tracks in the sand in some of your photos . When I lived there vehicles were not allowed on the beaches. When did that change?

Barrier Island Girl said...

Not to worry, Pat. The only vehicles allowed on the beach are those belonging to our lifeguards and GINS rangers who patrol the area.

Rangers who patrol the area daily are on the lookout in summer for signs of sea turtles which come ashore to lay their eggs. They then mark off the area and begin to monitor the nest.

And for the unfortunate few who once in a blue moon may have the bad judgment to TRY driving on the beach -- well, we have towing services to drag them back out. ;-)