Plastic Pollution Coalition

Here's a group that looks like they are making a difference. Awareness of the problem is the first step...but just the first.

Dead whale: the ugly truth about the junk in our water

Please read this article (as difficult as it will be) and do your part to fight the plastic pileup!

A wake-up call indeed.

Talk about removing stuff from waterways....(!)

Always something new to remove from my local river...

Went for an hour-long paddle in my local river last night and pulled this floating gem from among the reeds on the shore. It won't be long now and the fall rains will be falling and the river will be flooding. I'm sure there are many more unique chunks of human refuse waiting to be washed downstream. We'll be there to report back...

Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent

Finding (and removing) trash from our favorite waterways can get us down sometimes, so it's nice to pass along positive news. While shopping for laundry detergent the other day we came across this great idea for reducing plastic in packaging. The outer bottle is recyclable/compostable fiber board with a much lighter weight plastic liner. They claim 66% reduction in plastic. Seems like a good idea...

Kiket and Flagstaff Islands: accumulated trash

Just inside Deception Pass in Washington State you will find Kiket and Flagstaff islands, the state's newest park. Here's a newspaper article about the transfer of ownership, etc. We dropped by Flagstaff's south facing beach to pull some garbage off this new park's front porch (so to speak). It's a beautiful place and deserves to be kept clean of human trash.

Lawn chairs and Crawdads on the Sammamish Slough

A late afternoon paddle on the slough was just what I needed last night - quiet, calm, relaxing. Along the way I pulled some plastic bottles out of the river and, at one point, a lawn chair. The river has been running pretty high and fast in recent weeks with our rainy weather, but it's slowing down a bit now. All that high water flushed out some junk that has obviously been in the water for a while.

When I pulled the boat out of the water and started unloading the trash this crayfish appeared on the blade of my paddle. He was not happy and his body language made that very clear as I carried him back to the river.

Other trash warriors out there...

The Duwamish River, which empties into downtown Seattle's Elliott Bay, is a terribly polluted river. Whenever we paddle there, our canoe loads of trash seem almost futile, but if we all do our part we can make a difference. Here's a guy who believes!

Duwamish River in the news

Article in the Seattle Times about the polluted state of the Duwamish River in Seattle.

Another Sammamish Slough paddle, another TV set

Western Washington has seen some heavy rains and elevated freezing levels in the past few days. This has melted a lot of snow in the mountains and flooding has occurred on several local rivers. On my home stretch of the Sammamish Slough the high water cut loose a fair bit of trash, which I was able to pluck from river with relative ease. But tucked away in the brush on the bank of the river was one piece of trash I didn't have room for in the solo boat. As I mention in the above video, I'll head over with the car and pull it out that way. I would really like to meet the person who dumped that thing there...

On a brighter note, it felt good to be on the water. Saw a bunch of birds and a muskrat and got away for a little alone time and a good workout. Such is the magic of the little red canoe.

Spring has sprung and that means more paddling!

Thoughts about the Washington coast from our friends at Island Paddlers

Neah Bay Winter Getaway 2011 from Island Paddlers on Vimeo.

A rainy day on Lake Union, Seattle

I know this post looks a little gloomy - sorry about that. Lake Union in the heart of Seattle is actually a very nice place to paddle and we've done our fair share of plying its waters over the years. We often put in at the Museum of History and Industry, paddle through "The Cut," cruise through Portage Bay and do a lap around Lake Union itself. On the way back it's fish and chips lunch at Ivar's. Always something happening on and around the water here.

A few weeks back I did exactly the outing described above and picked up trash along the way. Not shown in the above image is one of the more interesting finds of late: a long, graphite oar for a rowing shell. I tucked it into the solo canoe and dropped it on one of the rowing club docks nearby. Hoping they can find a use for it. Other interesting junk included two PFD's and a perfectly good pair of running shoes. Quite a haul for the little red canoe.

Mid-week paddling on a rainy day in Seattle is usually a pleasantly lonely affair and this outing was no exception. Didn't see another paddler all day. And the fish and chips were great!

Great Pacific Garbage Patch...interesting perspective

This is a cool website (www.howbigreally.com) put together by the BBC that helps us see the dimensions of environmental disasters. In the example above, I've entered the zip code for Seattle and the area of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is then superimposed over that zip code to give me a better idea of the size of the patch. You can try it out for other infamous events such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl radiation cloud.

While this is very interesting stuff, it can make our efforts to pick up a few pieces of garbage in our local waterway seem insignificant, but don't give in to this thinking. We can make a noticeable difference - just one boat picking up trash. It's the right place to start.

Student Garbage Scows!

Just received this from our friends at The Overlake School in Redmond, WA. On Halloween a group of 12 upper school students and a teacher paddled, in costume, on the Sammamish River and hauled out a bunch of garbage, 1 soccer ball and 148 (!) tennis balls. Well done gang! The tennis balls are the downstream result of a dog park at Marymoor Park in Redmond. When a dog doesn't bring back a ball, guess what? It goes downstream, eddies out, and begins to rot.

Thanks again to the students at Overlake for helping keep our local waterway clean. It really does make a difference for all of us, human and other species, who spend time on the river.

No supertankers on BC's Central Coast!

Oil in Eden: The Battle to Protect Canada's Pacific Coast from Pacific Wild on Vimeo.

The central coast of BC is simply not a place for oil supertankers. Talk about trash! This is a wild, beautiful and deeply moving place and should be given every chance to remain that way. Go there and see for yourself...

In this case, we can stop the trash before it's spilled into these waters. Let's not let this plan go forward!

Plastic Garbage...

Snoqualmie River - Fall City to Carnation

Over Labor Day we paddled a relaxing stretch of the Snoqualmie River, east of Seattle. This stretch of the river runs through farmland, with many twists and turns and oxbows. Wildlife sightings include:

• Cutthroat Trout
• Great Blue Heron
• Cedar Waxwing
• Bald Eagle
• Belted Kingfisher
• Crow
• Raven
• Violet-Green Swallow
• Mallard Duck
• Turkey Vulture
• Canada Goose
• Common Merganser
• Spotted Sandpiper
• Robin
• Flycatcher (of some sort)
• Domestic Pigeon

But it wasn't all wildlife. We found the leavings of humans along the way. Among the refuse we pulled out of the river we found multiple flip-flops, two inflatable rafts, a road cone, many water bottles, a rubber boot, multiple plastic shopping bags, and about 40 beer cans all from the same location.

It always feels good to leave the river better than we found it. Certainly there is more trash still in the river that we missed (more than I care to think about), but we have to try don't we?

In the end, as always, the waterways of our local area are beautiful and we'll go back to them again and again.

Paddle well and leave it better than you found it.

Kaj

Plastic Bags...

Something to think about.

Bottles

Here's an interesting article about bottled water.

Cedar River/South Lake Washington

A spring outing at the south end of Lake Washington and the mouth of the Cedar River in Seattle. One item of trash at a time...