As promised, here are the results of my beach cleanup on Sunday morning. To refresh, I posted a flyer in the bathroom at work on Friday morning inviting everyone to help me clean the beach. I put it in the bathroom because this way I expected most people would see the flyer during the workday and at the very least probably have it come up in conversation with others as they returned to their respective departments as a novel item in the toilet. By the end of work on Friday one person had come to tell me she would meet me on Sunday morning. I in no way want to diminish Nadya's participation, but will point out that she has ridden bikes with me and helped me clean the beach on 3 other occassions. The point being that she would probably have joined me regardless of the flyer. I was more interested to see if I could get just one additional person to join me. Just one.
The weather is gorgeous today. Sunny with a blue sky with only a couple of high whispy clouds- no chance of rain. Not windy. Temp in the mid-70's. As advertised on the flyer I was at the bus stop on my bike at 8:00am. Nadya was running about 5 minutes late and did text me to say so. I waited and when she arrived we set off on the road the Partovoye. The beach at Partovoye is the closest to our town at 8km. It is just one straight shot to get there and takes about 30-40 leisurely minutes from door to beach. This is the first time I had been there since the beach season ended and although the beach is open to he public year round, the bus stops running there and the shops on the beach do close for the season. As we arrived on our bikes I noticed something else that signals the end of the beach season...they take the garbage dumpsters and recycling bins away! We looked in the three regular spots to find that all containers had, in fact, been removed leaving only some scattered debris in their vicinity as proof they were ever there in the first place. Again, according to the flyer the cleanup would run for 1 hour from 9:00-10:00. Since Nadya and I arrived around 8:30 I figured that if no one else showed up, we could work until 9:30 (1 hour) and call it a day. As we stood there considering our options of what to do without a dumpster she asked me "what are you going to do?" She was a more regular helper than anyone else, so I extended the question to "what are WE going to do"? I asked for her opinion and without giving much thought, she had propsed her solution..."maybe we shouldn't clean the beach today"? I said I thought I would check at the bus stop for a dumpster as well as close to the bathrooms and then I would make a decision. She joined me to survey the spots. Neither had garbage dumpsters, although the bus stop did have an overflowing garbage can. My concern about collecting the garbage into bags and leaving them in the area the dumpsters had once occupied was the scavenging animals who would no doubt rip the bags apart negating any efforts on our part. There was no way that I could plan to bring full garbage bags with us on bikes. I decided to move forward with the collection of two bags today. One for recyclable plastic bottles and one for dry garbage (usually consisting of empty cigarette packs and bottle caps- although today saw more glass bottles than usual). After the bags were both full I walked them to the bus stop and set them next to the cement structure. I will try to ask someone with a car to help me bring them to town so I can dispose of them properly. Nadya seemed impressed with my determination and solution. At this point I hadn't even noticed that additional help was not forthcoming. It was 9:30. We put in our hour and headed home.
Nadya and I leaving Partovoye
I will now return to contemplating my professional role in this library!
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