This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

What possesses a group of people to leave about 10 pounds of trash on the beach?

I can’t remember if I was taught to leave a place better than I found it or if I was instinctively born with that trait. I can’t remember if I was taught to honor and appreciate the world around me, or if I made the connection between the natural world and the human world at a young age. I don’t think anyone ever sat me down and said, “Jenn, the world is not your trash can.” I simply knew that it was right to respect a place—any place—where I might be spending time.

I am disgusted by what I have been seeing at the beach and in public spaces (including my own neighborhood) so far this summer. And, as far as I am concerned, if you can’t have respect for a place, you shouldn’t populate that space.

Last night, on our way back from a sunset sea glass walk, my husband and I saw a large group of young people having a bonfire on the beach. As we went by, I said to him, “I sure hope that have the decency to clean up after themselves.” Yeah, wishful thinking on my part.

This morning, when we got back to the beach, I was disgusted to see how much trash this single group of people left behind. By the time we drove down to stake out our spot, the beach was already populated with summer sunbathers, rooted to their spots with trash whirling around them, and not a single person was doing anything about it. Nobody could be bothered. I want to preface this by saying that we have been coming to this particular beach for 15 years. When we first started, very few people knew about it and on the busiest of days, there might be a dozen cars at the beach. We brought our girls up on those shores and we have enjoyed the natural beauty, the peace and tranquility, and the delicate ecosystem for well over a decade.

Things have been changing over the past five years or so. The town started advertising the beach in printed publications, probably as a way to generate additional revenue. More people started to make it a summer daytrip destination. What used to be a secret haven for summer residents and vacationers (like us), windsurfers, and people who appreciated a quiet summer sanctuary has now become a local hotspot for partiers, ecologically apathetic riff-raff, and unsupervised teens who revel in underaged drinking. The shores are now constantly lined with cars—and litter. So much litter.

I could have sat on the beach this morning, as blissfully unphased as the rest of the beachgoers, but my heart screamed “NO!” Not on my watch. So, I walked down to the lifeguard stand and asked for a trash bag. I explained that there was broken glass, beer cans, and all kinds of trash down the beach and I wanted to clean it up. She looked shocked by my request, but she got me a trash bag.

It took me a solid hour. One hour to do the best I could cleaning up a mess left by a bunch of drunk ignoramuses. I didn’t have to do it. There was nothing “in it for me” to do it. I don’t work for the public works department, nor was I getting paid. But, this place we call our home away from home means something to me. And, I can’t sit by, watch people so boldly vandalize it, and pretend it doesn’t break my heart and infuriate me, both. It was the right thing to do.

I care.

As you can see from the images above, I had my work cut out for me. What you can’t see is that not a single person offered to help me. Most watched, slack-jawed. Some thanked me. One guy, who was reading a newspaper in his pick-up truck while I picked up trash all around him leaned out the window and said, “Hey thanks. That’s really cool of you.”

My response? “Feel free to put down your newspaper and help me.” He didn’t.

By the time I was done, the trash bag weighed at least 10 pounds and was full of beer bottles, Fireball nips, broken shards of glass, soda cans, Dunkin Donuts coffee cups, s’mores skewers, notebook paper (which must have been used as kindling), limes for the Corona, bottle caps, plastic food wrappers, straws, plastic cutlery, fireworks casings, cigarette butts and a lighter, styrofoam cooler pieces, additonal trash bags (which were clearly not used to remove the trash), juice boxes, and myriad other detritus. Absolutely disgusting.

I couldn’t get all the broken glass…it was buried in the sand and I did the best I could with my bare hands. The beach was full of young kids and toddlers today—I pray that nobody sliced their foot open. I hope the town does something. I hope local law enforcement starts to crack down on the after-hours use of the beach. I hope people start getting fines for ruining such a beautiful, pristine part of New England. I hope more people take 5 minutes to pick up trash if they see it instead of letting it drift into our waterways and blow across our beaches.

If you can’t carry it out with you, you shouldn’t carry it in.

Give a shit, people.
The world is not your garbage can.
And honestly, it’s trashy people who leave trash behind.
The only thing you should leave behind after a day (or night) at the beach is your footprints.

Like Woodsy the Owl used to say, “Give a hoot—don’t pollute.”