Every time I go with my family to the coast to unwind and walk on the beach, I end up picking up trash.

On the first day out, I’m always unprepared, and I return from my beach walk with pockets bulging with garbage. I don’t usually find huge pieces of trash, no old furniture, diapers, or even plastic water bottles. It’s usually much worse: odd little unidentifiable bits of colored plastic, bottle caps, beads of styrofoam, pieces of solo cups, the small things that are difficult to pick up and easy to ingest. Sometimes I find an empty soda pop can on the walkway down to the beach, and sometimes the can has tumbled all the way down, but it hasn’t yet reached the water.

On my second walk, I always go armed with a sack, and I always fill it, picking up even the smallest pieces of blue and green plastic, getting an achy back. I straighten up and stretch and gloat with satisfaction over the little spot of sand I’ve cleaned, and then a wave washes in and covers my clean beach with more trash. I can see it all suspended in the water as it burbles over my feet. I look out over the water and can imagine a completely opaque ocean full of trash, all the tiny fragments that sea creatures consume when they mistake garbage for food, or simply take it in as they filter the water. And they starve. The waves grind down the trash until it is the size of grains of sand. I’ve heard that some beaches have plastic “sand” now. Here is an article about an excellent film documenting the plight of birds who consume plastic in the ocean, followed by a video. Be warned, the video is not for the faint of heart.

‘They all have plastic inside them’: New film explores our impact on Pacific albatrosses | CBC Radio

The birds on this island eat plastic – CNN Video

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that I don’t smell that briny sea odor anymore, and I don’t find any rubbery strips of olive brown kelp or sea shells either. Years ago I used to walk on the beaches near Santa Cruz, California. I found huge ropes of kelp, bulb at one end, and I sometimes used them as a jump rope. The sand was littered with sea glass and broken shells, and sanderlings scampered back and forth, daring the waves to catch them. Black-necked stilts poked about, and seals galumphed on the sand. When the season was right, one could see dolphins dancing and leaping, and whales spouting further out as they migrated. Sometimes anchovies would fill the harbor, and one could smell them for miles. That was only twenty years ago, in a heavily populated area. I haven’t asked any of the locals recently if their beaches are still clean, but I recently walked on a beach near Arcata, California, and I found only one piece of plastic.

Now, as I pick my way through the trash on an Oregon beach, I wonder how much plastic we consume in the fish we eat.

I eat mainly vegetarian, with the exception of fish, which I love, so this question becomes very personal. Are our tissues riddled with microplastics and molecules of styrofoam? Many of the things I find on beaches are, as I mentioned above, unrecognizable. I’ve been told that much of the styrofoam comes from coolers on fishing boats. But some items retain their form and identity: plastic lids, disposable floss picks, shreds and wisps of plastic twine, a toothbrush, an old sock, rims of plastic tubs, parts of a child’s plastic beach bucket or toy. I photograph the trash and identify as much as I can, and then…what? Throw it in a trash can? Will it just end up falling off a ship and into the sea, where it gets sucked into a currant that takes it to the Pacific Garbage Gyre or back to a beach in Oregon? I’ve heard that China and a few other Asian countries are no longer taking our recycling. Does all that get dumped into the sea now? Am I straining my back for nothing? Am I doing any good?

Identifying the pieces of trash that I find has goaded me into changing a few habits.

I make my own toothpaste from coconut oil, baking soda, and myrrh essential oil. I bought some bamboo toothbrushes with compostable bristles, and I avoid disposable floss picks (actually, I’ve always avoided those). I carry my coffee mug and water jar, and I take cloth bags with me when I go shopping. The process of learning about and reducing waste has made me ever more passionate in my pursuit of a plastic free lifestyle. A good friend, Cynthia Albers, spearheaded a Zero Waste action in Sebastopol, California, with great success. You can read about it on her blog at https://arcinspired.net. She writes beautifully about her efforts to stop waste, as well as many other topics. I highly recommend it.

Here is a good introduction to the problem of our consumption and waste:

In spite of everything I’ve read, there are still some issues that have stumped me. To start with the small: what about dental floss? I haven’t come across any that is really sustainable, but I welcome any suggestions. And that is just one small thing. What about recycling? Even if we assume that our recycling really does land where it’s supposed to, in recycling facilities which are often in the Far East, we mustn’t ignore the toxic effects of recycling itself. Nobody who has a choice in the matter would ever want to live next to one of these factories. And then there are lots of things which cannot be recycled at all. But let’s say that we do everything “right”: we buy bulk foods, we even buy soybeans to make our own tofu, we make our own toothpaste, we don’t buy bottled water, and so on. There’s something I call ‘peeling the onion’. Here’s an example: I make my toothpaste, so I don’t buy all those plastic tubes of toothpaste. But look further back. The baking soda often comes in plastic satchels, the coconut oil often has a plastic lid or even a plastic jar, and the mason jar lid I used to cover my half-cup mason jar of toothpaste has a rubber (more likely plastic) seal, and the glass bottle of myrrh essential oil has a plastic lid. The oil and baking soda were probably transported on a ship or large truck, on a pallet wrapped in plastic.

Another example of peeling the onion, one that is quite basic: whenever I end up with yogurt containers or hummus tubs, I save them for starting seeds. I just make a few holes in the bottom. People who do this often argue that it’s keeping the plastic tubs out of the waste stream and cutting down on toxic recycling, but is that really true? Eventually the tubs will wear out, become brittle, and break apart into little shards of plastic. Eventually, and not that far into the future, they will end up in the waste stream, if not in the earth itself. At least they aren’t in the belly of some poor albatross, I tell myself, but the truth is that creatures in the soil are also affected by them. One solution is to make one’s own yogurt and hummus, and this does really reduce the amount of plastic packaging. The same goes for using bar soap (shampoo bars), instead of shampoo in plastic bottles. I shampoo with bar soap, then use cider vinegar as a quick rinse. I make a tea of rosemary and mix it with the vinegar. If I examine the pathway from the beginning to my hair, I find that it’s a mixed bag. My rosemary is homegrown, and my vinegar comes in a glass bottle. Some of the soaps are my own creations. It seems on the surface like I’ve cut down my miles traveled and carbon footprint enormously. But wait. There’s (organic) coconut oil in the soap, which traveled a long way in a plastic tub. Some of the other fats in the soap come in plastic bottles, and the vinegar bottle has a plastic lid. I’ve just pushed the responsibility for the plastic packaging further up the chain. I could make my own vinegar, and that’s on my list of projects for late summer. But how else can I do better? Such thoughts keep me awake at night.

I must confess that I don’t know the answer. I wanted to explain a bit about my own journey towards a plastic free life, and the challenges I encounter. Each year brings deeper awareness of the problem, along with plans for new projects. Hopefully, dear reader, you’ve now been goaded into reducing your own waste. I invite you to peel your own onions, and if you like, share those experiences with me. Solving the problem of plastic waste requires enormous effort from all of us, and we have to start somewhere.

A dead gull, found surrounded by plastic waste