We collected around 60kg of waste (which will be recycled) at the clean-up yesterday.
We only had a few Volunteers, but we can call it a successful day.
There’s still more rubbish around, mainly small bottle caps and such – I call this beach now bottle-cap beach.
There were still some birds around. Some are 1st year birds which come for the summer and some are breeding here in Kuwait. Greater Flamingos among them.
The guy in the last few pics was an official trash picker-upper that came along to do his morning chores (I suppose) and who was obviously flustered at what happened.
The family in one of the shots thanked us whole heartedly and seemed a little embarrassed that we were doing this.
Bird count: White-cheeked Tern (1st summer) – 5 House Sparrow – 26 Common Myna – 2 Greater Sand Plover (1st summer) – 4 Slender-billed Gull (1st summer) – 1 (Eastern) Reef Egret (dark form) – 3 Greater Flamingo – 29 Bar-tailed Godwit – 1 Kentish Plover – 3 Species Total: 9
We only had a few Volunteers, but we can call it a successful day.
There’s still more rubbish around, mainly small bottle caps and such – I call this beach now bottle-cap beach.
There were still some birds around. Some are 1st year birds which come for the summer and some are breeding here in Kuwait. Greater Flamingos among them.
The guy in the last few pics was an official trash picker-upper that came along to do his morning chores (I suppose) and who was obviously flustered at what happened.
The family in one of the shots thanked us whole heartedly and seemed a little embarrassed that we were doing this.
Bird count: White-cheeked Tern (1st summer) – 5 House Sparrow – 26 Common Myna – 2 Greater Sand Plover (1st summer) – 4 Slender-billed Gull (1st summer) – 1 (Eastern) Reef Egret (dark form) – 3 Greater Flamingo – 29 Bar-tailed Godwit – 1 Kentish Plover – 3 Species Total: 9
In viewing all of your clean-up posts it leaves me wondering if all the debris, trash, crap is a build-up over years of neglect or are the beaches destined to look like that again in just a few months time. It really is depressing to see just in photos. I cannot imagine how it must be really being there.
ReplyDeleteIt has piled up over the years and it comes back with every tide.
ReplyDeleteBut,... whatever we clean up past the tide line stays clean at least for a while. Below the tide line, well, whatever gets dumped into the sea - be it by people at the beaches or sailors out on the water - washes up ashore somewhere.
What we are doing is probably a drop in a water bucket as big as the Persian Gulf itself.
But we are also doing it to raise awareness. Blogs around the country pick up our activities and that way more and more people get aware of it and maybe think again, before dumping something the next time.
The people who lead the program also go to schools and hold lectures in classrooms.
It's tedious work when the government has their eyes shut somewhat.
At least we get permissions from them to go to certain places and clean up there.
Maybe the next step will follow and they will start some initiatives in coordination with K's path.
We shall see.
As for the 'being here' part.
It is just sad to see not only the trashed beaches.
If you walk around in the neighbourhoods trash is just everywhere.
The big trash containers get rummaged through by poor people looking for scraps, trash falls at the sides of them and piles up.
When they are full, people dump trash besides them.
People throw their trash out of cars, out of their apartment windows (some more pics for next Wednesday),.... furniture and whatnot just gets dumped when not needed any more.
Even when seeing the photos, for most people behavior like that is hard to fathom.