Four crazy cats. Lots of trash....

By Alfonso Lopez

This last Saturday my friends and I arranged a meeting to talk about the cleanup event we are organizing for this coming January 30th 2010. We decide to get some work done while we talk details of our upcoming event. Laureano, Facundo, Agustin and I meet down at Playa Grande (AKA El Yacht) in Mar del Plata (Arg) and start picking up trash on and around the rocks that merging into the ocean form the Escollera Norte which is part of the entrance to the city's fishing port. This beach is know for having real good quality waves that fire right off the jetty, as well as the trash that collects against it.

Laureano, Alfonso, Agustin and Facundo. Playa Grande, Mar del Plata.

As usual, we make sure we bring gloves, big trash bags and even a saw to try and cut some of the thick fishing rope trapped in the rocks. In less than two hours we collected lots of trash ranging from plastic bottles to plastic bags, styro foam, bottle caps, cigarette butts, Mc Donalds packaging, lots of nylon rope and glass bottles (lots already broken) among many other hazardous items.

The surf was small on Saturday and it felt good to invest some of our time to help cleanup the beach.

Lots of people enjoying the beach keep looking at us in awe, as if we were crazy for what we were doing. Some of them even congratulated us for our efforts while others asked us if we worked for the county. Our sincere reply was- No. We are just surfers, the waves are small and so we come to the beach to clean up our playground. Do you want to help?-

None of the people around the area we had chosen to cleanup offered to help, but we did notice how some of them that had already thrown thrash around where they were sitting started collecting the trash they had planned to leave behind. 

We can't just sit and complain I tell my friends. This is just the beginning of our awareness campaign and we hope to see you all at the beach on January 30th !