Beached plastic

Here’s a cool little story from June. I was hiking into a remote North Pacific beach in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve to clean up plastic flotsam and jetsam. My favourite find was a tube of Russian toothpaste. The group I was with found literally a ton of stuff and piled it at the tideline, then ferried it out to our boat Island Solitude. We dropped it all off at a warden’s cabin a few days later. It was great knowing we’d helped keep a Haida heritage sites like this in a more natural state. And I was even rewarded with some true treasure for my effort — a mouth-blown glass fishing float from Japan!

The best part, however, was how it got us all thinking about our plastic usage as individuals — even if some of us were pretty far down that road anyway, it made you want to double down on your efforts. After all, when it comes to single use plastics and plastic waste we can all do a little more.

And that’s the idea behind this initiative by Canadian Geographic and the Recycling Council of Ontario called 10,000 Changes: Canada’s Commitment to Rethink Plastics. And you don’t have to go to a remote beach (though the beach would be happy to have you) to get on board. Make your own commitments to reduce plastic consumption in your daily life on this site. Who knows, it might lead you to some kind of treasure, too.