September 6, 2022

by Dr. Plastic Picker

It is 547am and I’m sitting at our new-to-us kitchen table. The previous kitchen table was a hand-me-down within our extended family at least three times. It started at my parent’s house, then my sisters, back to my moms, and then to us. We’ve had this table now about six years, as long as we’ve had our current house. Now thinking back, we were in need of a kitchen table and I think my parents were looking to upgrade. I realize the contradictions in my life, in that we had a newly built house with an old kitchen table.

Accepting those contradictions and my imperfections is part of my activism. I want to show the world and particularly those who I actually know, that you can become an environmentalist and not own a Tesla. You don’t have to live zero-waste (hopefully with less waste). All you have to do is care, and choose to make a simple choice that bends the arc toward a sustainable future. It can be as simple and powerful as picking up a piece of plastic from the beach.

With that, let’s return to the real business of this blog which is documenting how many bags of plastic pollution I’ve saved from joining the Great Pacific Ocean Patch! If you ever need to be inspired, just follow Ocean Clean Up and realize that there are people out there trying to solve our world’s problems and mostly they are not politicians but worker-bees like you and me.

Dr. Plastic Picker continues to try to show up for the earth. I did my 5th and hopefully last interview on extreme heat events for our HMO. Yesterday was on NBC and attached to the news story they did on the heat exhaustion numbers from the Aztec vs Arizona game.

Just looked on-line and here is the part of my interview they aired. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/videos/concerns-grow-over-heat-related-injuries-at-san-diego-state-football-game/3040088/

Well, back to actually telling you how much plastic pollution I picked up!

#728 Lifetime Total!!! 1952 Items Salvaged!!!

July and August 2022 Totals! – 24 BAGS

Object	Total	Fate
Aluminum Cans	3	Recycled
Plastic Bottles	10	Recycled
Glass Containers	10	Recycled

And that is it for today! These are the real adventures of your local litter picking pediatrician and my journey to at least #1000 bags of plastic pollution, and all the other crazy things I’ve been doing to try to help save the earth. OMG five local interviews on extreme heat! I can’t believe it. It was really weird and wonderful how that all happened. Well back to trying to take care of myself, so I’m going for a walk and starting a new count for September! I took the day off as it’s the kids first day of school. I’m on call for the earth, but out of the office otherwise!

Here is my lifetime totals https://drplasticpicker.com/plastic-picking-round-up/