Beach Clean-ups: What they are really about

Sunday, May 19th. It’s a stunning morning in Cleveland – sunny and clear, in the high 60s. I wake both of the girls and we head to a beach clean-up on Lake Erie. The offer of a bagel and orange juice helps motivate them into the car.

Driving to Euclid Beach, a couple miles east of downtown Cleveland, we pass through some of Cleveland’s neighborhoods scarred by poverty and disinvestment. The girls want to know why some of the houses are “breaking down” and why so many stores are boarded up. We talk about why this might be. We see people waiting for buses and talk about the importance of public transportation, and the challenges that many people face to simply get to their jobs or to care for themselves or family.

We drive on a bridge that takes us over a significant corridor of train tracks. We talk about what these railways might have been like in the 1930s and 40s when Cleveland’s economy and population were booming. We talk about what still travels on the railways in and out of this city and the Great Lakes region. 

We sit at a stoplight by Collinwood High School and talk about what a school means to a community, and how beautiful this massive building is. We think about how many people have attended the school in exactly the century since it opened its doors in 1924. 

At the park, it’s quiet. A few morning joggers and walkers. Some men in reflective yellow vests working on parking lot repairs. Birds calling overhead. The lake stretching out to a barely perceptible horizon.

Cleveland Metroparks staff give us an orange Home Depot bucket and two pickers. We’ve brought our own gardening gloves. As we descend to the sand, we talk about the fact that we are here to pick-up litter – large or small. Yes, it feels like a “win” to find a plastic bag, a broken down Starbucks cup or the remnants of a paper plate. The visibility factor is high. But I tell the girls it is also a contribution to pick-up a cigar tip, a fragment of blue plastic, or a piece of a red straw. 

That red straw? Highly attractive to a fish. Probably more so than the Starbucks cup. What if the fish eats it? Perhaps that fish dies. Perhaps that fish is caught by a recreational or commercial fisherman, moving plastic particles into the human realm. Perhaps that fish is eaten by another fish, moving plastic particles further in the lake’s ecosystem.

We make our way down the beach. We see a baby bunny near the tall grasses at the back of the sandline. We say hello to another person on the beach. The girls putter at the shoreline. The water is so clear! they say. We talk about holding two truths at the same time: This clarity is both good and bad. They ask why there are a few sediments that seem to float. I’m not completely sure, I say. Maybe we can learn more.

Eventually we get to the end of the beach, circle back along the multipurpose trail above the beach, add our litter to a small dumpster, and return our bucket and pickers.

Picking up litter on a Lake Erie beach for two hours is not going to solve the problem of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes. However, it is something else: It’s an intentional act that may have greater impact than initially imagined. 

What’s a beach clean-up really about? For me, it’s about two things: place and purpose. It’s about situating ourselves in our community and in our natural world and understanding what we each mean to each other.

A third P – pollution – sits in third place. Still part of the winner’s circle. But for me, it’s not the gold or silver one.