Talkdesk Bay Area Beach Clean Up

• 6 people
• 60 minutes
• 6 bags of trash
• 27 bottle caps
• 31 cigarette butts
• 1 Gatorade bottle (with a cap)?
• Many plastic toys, beads, gatorade bottles

Community and environmental giving is a core value at #Talkdesk. We believe in giving back to our community by volunteering our time, supporting non-profits, and minimizing our global footprint. Talkdesk gives employees one day each quarter to volunteer to a cause. Last week, in support of that, I led a small group of Bay Area employees on a Beach Clean Up Project in Half Moon Bay, CA.??

As a child, a constant companion of mine was my family's farm.? Yes.? The cornfields.? The pasture. The fascinating fossil rocks with ancient creatures embedded within on the shores of our pond. We didn’t live on it, but I’d spend weekends roaming and exploring. I built a relationship with the land.? We worked to preserve it, planting waterways with blue grass to prevent the erosion of silt into the Muddy Mississippi.? Rachel Carlson’s the Silent Spring sat omnipresent on our living room coffee table.

I embodied the tenants of sustainability before it was an everyday vocabulary word.

As I moved to California, the ocean fascinated me.? I felt a kinship to the unending expanse of water.? Different, but not unlike the never-ending horizon of flat corn and soybean fields of the Midwest.? The Pacific Ocean became a new companion.?

I feel fortunate that Talkdesk allows me a volunteer day to help the Ocean.

The mystery of what lies beneath pulls at me while the sight of its beach litter pains my conscience. Like my family farm, the ocean is a friend. A welcomed respite from the Silicon Valley’s sprawl and hustle.?

During our Talkdesk Beach Clean Up Day in Half Moon Bay, we were archeologists for an hour.? The trash telling stories of those who came before, who enjoyed, and left tiny traces of their time spent.? Cigarette butts. Plastic bottle caps.? Bright, primary color toys abandoned. Tiny pieces of plastic.? Crinkly clear wrappings from sandwiches, lollipops.? A child's beaded jewelry. We searched the landscape for the big finds. While most of our trash treasures were small in size, the impact of their removal will be great.

Some facts on our finds.

Cigarette Butts (California Perspective)

Cigarette Butts take 10 years to disintegrate. In the meantime, they present a choking hazard to marine mammals.? Additionally, the cigarettes release toxins into the water.? A study conducted by the California Department of Transportation found that cigarette butts make up 34 percent of the total waste captured in California. In 2020, 190,042 cigarettes were removed from California beaches and inland waterways as part of the annual International Coastal Cleanup. Worldwide, it’s estimated that 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts end up as waste each year.9

In 1 hour, we picked up 31.?

Plastic

Trash Travels estimates that plastic bags can take 20 years to decompose, plastic bottles up to 450 years, and fishing line, 600 years; but in fact, no one really knows how long plastics will remain in the ocean. Marine life gets entangled in plastic and ingest plastic as the smaller pieces can have a similar color and shape of their prey. Then we eat the fish.? According to Plastic Oceans,? we eat 40 pounds of plastic in our lifetime. (what!?)?(come on? really?)

Plastic bottle caps are one of the top 5 pollutants in the ocean.?

In 1 hour, we found 27

Our Clean Up Crew: ( Isabelle Carberry , Nicole L. , Remington Green , Narisa Yap , Julia Ochinero (Dee Lew not pictured.) )

I’m a hypocrite.? Yes. I’m not perfect at all this.?

Before you think this is my religion -- know it's an aspiration.? I’m trying to take my hydro bottle with me to tennis and to my sons' high school football games, etc. But you will for sure find plastic bottles rolling around on my car floor. And, I don’t use my SodaStream like I envisioned, so our recycle bin at home has a lot of diet soda bottles.? Sometimes overflowing. I’m trying to do better.

To inspire the next generation to FEEL a relationship with our earth -- land or sea, I lead workshops in local schools asking children to bring in their trash. While we turn trash into something treasured, we talk about the little part we each can play to be kind to our friend the earth.?