Little actions, big impacts

Or, when doing something is the best choice.

Saturday morning, October 26, 2024, dawned with a hazy film of thin clouds. The low coastal mist burned off almost immediately as the sun crept over the seaside cliffs, across the sand, and spread over the dazzling blue-green Pacific. A formation of pelicans glided north toward Orange County. A gentle swell was rolling, and the tide was retreating.

I pulled up to South Ponto State Beach around 8 am and backed my truck onto the sand’s edge. It was cool enough for pants but not so cold that a T-shirt and flip-flops wouldn’t do. I left my hoodie in the passenger seat and dropped the tailgate. 

A man approached and introduced himself. He was my site support volunteer, and after a quick chat, we got to work unloading the beach cleanup gear. Together, we hoisted the bright blue Surfrider Foundation tent and set out two tables, covering them with tablecloths in the same blue and adorned with the white logo of the San Diego chapter. We placed signs on the table with the QR codes volunteers would shortly use to check-in.

I slotted stacks of data cards into clipboards and placed them on the tables next to boxes of small pencils. I pulled my sample jar from the bin. In it were fragments of expanded polystyrene foam–degraded food containers, mostly–and tiny pieces of red, yellow, blue, green, and purple plastic. There were plastic water bottle caps, cigarette butts, an army guy, a pink Power Ranger mixed in with zip ties, discarded fishing line, and a couple of plastic flossers.

We laid two bags of garbage pickers, bins of gloves, and reusable bags on the sand behind the tent. On the nearby table went colanders for sifting sand from garbage and a sign with instructions for separating recyclables from rubbish.

As I hung my portable scale from the tent's roof, I noticed the first volunteers gathering around it.

Good morning! If you pre-registered, scan the QR code on the table and get yourselves checked in. It’s getting sunny, so if you need sunscreen, there’s SUNMUD on the table. It’s sustainably produced and packaged and was developed by one of the other beach cleanup site captains.

Once a few more people gather, I’ll make a short announcement and get you started. 

The table was set.

An unfortunate reality and necessary resistance

Unfortunately, the United States is once again about to be run by people incapable of comprehending complex systems. That limited understanding manifests as ignorance of how our ecosystems work and the dire threats they face. People tend to express their confusion about how the world works as fear, which they assuage by inventing simple stories that ignore basic, observable facts.

Ignorance is a powerful force.

Fortunately, action is a more powerful force.

I live by a core principle: take little actions that add up to big impacts. Individually, I cannot solve climate change, but I can pick up garbage from my local beach and offer kind encouragement to fellow beachgoers to pack out what they packed in. Each person taking that small action brings us closer to solving our existential crisis of global ecological collapse. Each small step alleviates the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that breeds apathy and the rejection of science and facts.

As of October 2024, 50,000 Surfrider volunteers had removed over 70,000 pounds of garbage from our coastlines. That’s the equivalent of 28,000 pairs of blue jeans, the popcorn consumed during a Super Bowl broadcast, or four fully loaded garbage trucks.

In 2023, 11,000 volunteers removed 300,000 objects and 19,000 pounds of garbage from San Diego’s beaches and coastal communities. Though they are a small fraction of San Diego’s 3.2 million residents and 32 million tourist visitors, those volunteers made a huge impact on our ecosystem, making our beaches and oceans cleaner and safer.

That is what active resistance looks like. 

The case for active resistance

More volunteers gathered, including a team of badasses from our local professional women’s football club, San Diego Wave FC, and a women’s volunteer group from Apple. A Girl Scout Brownies troop arrived, and a squad from ASML posted up. Finally, folks from the local community gathered around the tent in ones and twos. These were all just people taking time from their Saturday morning to do good–little actions with big impacts.

I announced to the assembled crowd.

First off, thank you for coming. My name is Eric, and I am the volunteer site captain for this monthly beach cleanup. These events aren’t possible without volunteers like you, and it’s these little actions–taking a couple of hours out of your Saturday morning–that make the biggest impacts. So, thank you, and give yourselves a round of applause.

Today is an important day. Today marks one year that volunteers like you have been coming out to South Ponto and Tamarack State Beaches to clean up our beaches and make a difference. 

We do this on the fourth Saturday of every month, so consider returning next month! If you can’t, consider donating a small amount and becoming a member. Your donations fund programs and the salaries of the chapter’s full-time employees, like Joana, our fabulous chapter manager, and Gabriel, the world’s greatest beach cleanup coordinator. They are amazing people who work so hard and deserve your support.

Other ways to get involved include programs like Clean Border Water Now, Rise Above Plastics, Blue Water Task Force, and Ocean Friendly Restaurants. If you want to learn more, there’s an information card on the table with QR codes for each program.

I like to think of beach cleanups as ‘twofers’ because we make an immediate impact by taking the garbage off our local beaches, but we also count and weigh the items we find, and we use that data for local, county, state, and federal policy advocacy. 

The data we collected about cigarette butts–and you’ll find a lot of those today–helped to push through a public smoking ban in Encinitas. Similar data helped push through helium balloon bans in Del Mar, Encinitas, and Solana Beach.

We combine this data with those collected by other local groups, like our friends at San Diego Coastkeeper. 

I picked up my little mason jar full of trash specimens and held it out for the volunteers to see close up, walking along the small semi-circle they’d formed before me.

Looking around, you might think this beach looks pretty clean. But scattered across it are the tiny fragments of foam and plastic you see here in the jar. This is mainly what we are looking for, so keep a sharp eye out. Speaking of sharps, we sometimes find those, too. Come and get me so we can properly dispose of them in our sharps container. 

You’ll find bottle caps, food and straw wrappers, and cigarette butts. Anything small and colorful probably doesn’t belong. You’ll find bottles and cans, orphaned shoes, clothes, and towels. Last month, we found a hatchet. The month before that, an abandoned bicycle.

Since the tide is going out, I recommend walking along the tideline. You’ll find a lot there. If you feel ambitious, pick through seaweed piles, as there are always plenty of items trapped inside. The jetty collects lots of trash, especially the bigger items, but please be extra careful when navigating those rocks and always keep an eye on the ocean for incoming waves.

I paused and held up a data card.

Photo courtesy of San Diego Wave FC.

Today, as you walk along the beach and collect trash, use this data card to note what you find. Most items are categorized for you on the cards, so check front and back when you find a bottle cap, a foam fragment, a piece of plastic, or anything else you pick up and make a hash mark in that category. Your counts don’t need to be perfect; just do your best. When you return, we will weigh your haul, finalize your counts, and sort into trash and recyclables.

When you are ready, get a data card and pencil for your group. Then, come around to the ocean side of the tent, grab a picker, glove, and bag, and head out. 

And remember, what’s the most important part of today?

HAVE FUN!

Volunteers spread out, some heading north toward the jetty, others south toward the cliffs. They walked in small groups, heads down, scouring the sand for the little pieces of trash I’d shown them, reaching with pickers or stooping to sort through a pile.

I took a deep breath, a sip of coffee, and smiled.

Resilience and persistence

Last month, 50% of registered voters asked about their most important issues told pollsters that climate change was either somewhat or not important to them. Presumably, that percentage correlates to the percentage of people who support political ideologies based on wild conspiracy theories and insist climate change is a hoax. People convinced of those conspiracy theories will soon be making funding decisions about the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

I suspect that, for the time being, our beach cleanup and water quality data will be used only at the local, county, and state levels when making policy. 

I am ambivalent about this. On the one hand, reversing climate policy and defunding essential programs could have catastrophic long-term consequences. On the other hand, this might be an opportunity to decentralize governance and focus on impactful efforts at the local level.

Surfrider is persistent and resilient. I cannot imagine a slowdown of advocacy and lobbying at the federal level. If anything, I expect to see an increase in urgency and a redoubling of efforts.

In the meantime, volunteers will contain the devastating impacts of negative federal policy changes by fighting beach by beach and town by town up and down the West Coast.

Please take action.

Go to your local foodbank or homeless shelter and give an hour of time, effort, and kindness. Find your community and use it to resist the negativity and ugliness and create change at the most basic grassroots level.

If you are in San Diego County, we do beach cleanups up and down the coast every weekend. Little actions have the biggest impacts.

I hope to see you there.

The faces of active resistance. Photo courtesy of San Diego Wave FC.