DON QUIXOTE DE LA PLAYA !
Don Quijote en la playa de Barcino, de Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau
In
the nine and a half years that I have been picking up the trash on Ipanema
beach, I have been called many things but perhaps the most amusing epithet is
Don Quixote.
One day, as I was picking up the plastic cups, plastic
supermarket bags, plastic bottles, hundreds of plastic straws, glass
beer-bottles, remains of food, dirty nappies, used sanitary towels, and other
unmentionable ugly waste left on or near the waterline by beach-goers, a casual
observer shouted, “ Hey, Don Quixote, how
is it going?” I was not offended by the allusion. I replied, “ I could do with some Sancho Panzas to give
me a hand!”
I am sure there are many who think my single-handed beach cleaning is a quixotic idea. However, there is an
important difference between Don Quixote and myself. The intrepid but
delusional errant knight created by Cervantes fought imaginary enemies, tilting
at windmills because he thought they were giants.
In contrast, there is nothing
imaginary about the threat posed by plastic trash left on the beach and swept
into the sea. It is a real enemy of the marine and human environment and
represents a giant problem, as evidenced by the immense gyres of plastic waste
in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
See the following photo and chart. Click on the
links to read the articles.
Even in the off-season or winter months,
beachgoers leave an incredible amount of trash and garbage along the waterline
of Ipanema beach. This is waterline trash that I collected on 01.09.2019 and
would otherwise have ended up in the ocean. (Photos taken by me).
By 18:00, I must have collected about 50 kilos
of plastic trash, garbage and glass bottles just on the short stretch of the waterline
of the beach shown in the above photos. It is back-breaking work and is not helped by the removal of many of the municipal trash wheelie bins from the beach.
I give thanks for windy, overcast
days in Rio de Janeiro because at least the beaches and marine environment will
get some temporary respite from the onslaught of trash and garbage caused by
the ignorance, sheer laziness and deliberate, negligent littering by
beachgoers.
On
stormy days, the sea may well give up its dead but it also gives up the trash
and plastic jetsam thrown away by beachgoers.
The idiotic habit that humans have of taking the tops off plastic water bottles
and throwing them away separately on the beach results in the jetsam in my
photo of one small corner of the beach at Arpoador in Ipanema.
Count the number of bottle tops and bits of
plastic that you can see in this photo and then multiply it several thousand
times in order to get an idea of the volume swept into the sea
from Rio’s beaches.
We
need to wake up before it is too late! People seem to be wilfully blind to the
damage they cause to the environment.
All
the signs are here that Mother Nature has had enough of our selfish behaviour. If
we do not change and we give up on protecting the natural environment, one day
soon Mother Nature may well give up on us!
