Let's just do it

With 150 000 000 tonnes (in my opinion, a thumb suck) of plastic floating in our oceans, it may be thought that a turnout of 20 people to do a beach clean-up in Kommetjie on Saturday morning would be just a drop in the ocean, but 20 bags of plastic can still make a wave. Our dedicated organiser never waivers in her mission to make a difference and was ready with bags and latex gloves for the volunteers, recording every little victory on camera to keep people informed of the need to rid the oceans of this scourge.
You may think that picking up plastic involves spotting bags and chip packets among the jetsam, but those are the easy bits. The big problem is the micro plastic as it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, becoming easily eaten by marine life and resulting in horrendous suffering and death. The islands of kelp that wash up harbour most of the litter, and it is quite revolting to pick your way through mounds of rotting, slippery seaweed to pick out the plastic straws, lollipop sticks, fragments of polystyrene packaging and earbud sticks (if you are lucky - there are more disgusting things!), but one cannot gloss over the problem and pick out the easy areas to clean up. Fishing line tangled in kelp is a challenge and a pair of scissors or knife will come in handy if you are planning on joining the next clean-up.
An hour or two on the beach is no hardship - if we get into the habit of always taking a bag with us when out walking (it will also be recycled!), we can all make a difference. This will never prevent those who throw rubbish into the sea, or leave their picnic litter on the beach, or throw takeaway containers from their cars from being the cause of this mess, and it is unlikely that they will benefit from education campaigns as they have no interest in anything beyond themselves. Oil companies are not going to stop contributing to the destruction of the environment - money is all that matters. Plastic, when recycled, can be the most useful material for turning into outdoor furniture, housing materials, fencing, decking, etc. I'm sure that if scrap plastic merchants paid per kilo, the litterers would be out there every day scouring the beaches and roadsides for every KFC bucket they could find.