May 2019: San Diego Beach Cleanup Totals

May 2019 was an unusual month for San Diego and California… we had rain.. could it be due to climate change?  Due to weather and laziness, I only beach cleaned 19 days, which was a major decrease of beach trash from 2018.

My new thing is to separate the water by month and this was the majority of water saved. About 8 gallons of water to be reused in the summer.

Water rescued off the beach May 2019

Decided to start tracking what I wash to either donate-giveaway or resell. In May I washed a total of 97 textiles: 53 clothes, 5 hats, 1 sheet, 34 towels and 4 pairs of tennis shoes. Year to date wash that I have tracked is 398.

2018 Beach Clean numbers: In 2018, I was canning and recycling, which involved taking recyclables out of trash cans.Some of those numbers are reflected in May 2018. The other big number was in plastic foam pieces in 2018 v.s 2019. I attribute that to several reasons: My focus is the big stuff, towels, clothes, shoes, bottles, which other beach cleaners can’t really carry. The second reason, is many restaurants have converted out of styrofoam containers, which is leaving less pieces on the beach. Thirdly, with bad weather, there has not been as many disposable boogie boards, which break and spew styrofoam up and down the beach.

Styrofoam from boogie boards

Towels continue to left on the beach. Several weeks ago, I picked up 21 towels on the beach.

May 5, 2019

Drinking continues unbated, and with that drinking, comes all the trash associated with drinking, vaping, cigarettes, munchies, lighters, clothing and more trash.

May 22, 2019

May 12 2019

After a rain and a higher tide which washed away many pieces of plastic.

May 17 2019

That bottom piece is a baby bassinette that was left in a parking lot.. fortunately, we hope they remembered the baby. It cannot be recycled. it is very cheaply manufactured and none would take for resell.

May 30, 2019

Our tourist season begins. Can’t wait to see the treasures which the tourists leave behind.