December 2019 – Plastic Picking Round Up!

January 1, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I included my haul from today for December 2019. Keeps my accounting easier. It’s 835AM and New Years Day. My mother-in-law is making special Korean soup that is delicious and we eat every New Years. It’s a tradition and the children look forward to it. The two tall Plastic Picker family children are sleeping, as they actually stayed up until midnight drinking bubbly apple cider which is a first. Life has given me so many new joys and opportunities for growth since I started ocean plastic picking and blogging 4 months ago, but I need to keep true to the mission – which is to get to the beach and pick up plastic and do my part.

I saw a seagull swallow whole a single-use plastic sauce container this morning. I wrote on Instagram with the posted video, “Objective proof that single-use sauce containers can be eaten by seabirds whole. I tried to rush the gull to get him to drop it, but the bird ran deeper into the coastal waters and crunched and swallowed that thing whole.” This reminded me that all the pieces I pick up are important, the big to prevent it from breaking into smaller bits and the small as the birds will mistake them for food. There was hot pink silly string left by a New Year’s reveler and it was the first thing I carefully gathered to protect the endangered birds (Marbled Godwits, Whimbrels, Snowy Plovers) that live on the stretch of beach I clean.

So here are my plastic picking totals with total bags, and salvaged items in order of frequency. I picked up about 27 bags of trash, which is pretty good since we were in Utah for a week-long vacation. There, I only was picking up recyclables here and there. I think 20-30 bags a month and about 100 salvagables is a good steady goal to have. You can also see my total since August 30, 2019 at https://drplasticpicker.com/plastic-picking-round-up/ I wrote 32 blog post which is a good steady number. I think November with the 40 blog post was too much. Everything in moderation, even blogging. I don’t want to burn out since this journey is also about wellness.

27.5 Bags of Ocean Bound Plastic Collected

96 Items Salvaged

Object	Total Number	Fate
Aluminum Cans	31	In my garage – destined for recycling
Plastic Bottles	29	Recycled
Sand Toys	11	Gifted
Flip Flops	1	Donated Goodwill
Clothing Items	8	Donated Goodwill
Toys	6	Donated Goodwill
Glass Containers	4	Recycled
Tennis Balls	1	Washed and it’s our puppy’s new thing
Office Supply Items	1	Using

Probably the most fun development is that I’ve always loved blue, and I’m keeping some of the pretty blue plastic pieces and doing some trash art. I’ll post about that later! Makes me happy as I’ve always loved jigsaw puzzles.

Here were the plastic picking totals from the previous month November 2019 https://drplasticpicker.com/november-2019-plastic-picking-round-up/

Here was this month’s (December 2019) Secondary Net Environmental Positives from being more earth-aware https://drplasticpicker.com/secondary-environmental-net-positives-december-2019/