Southern California beach suffers from man-made pollution

 

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What would you think if you took your family to your local beach, walked down to the water’s edge and found the water filled with man-made pollution?  And I don’t mean just a few pieces of garbage, I mean littered with plastic bottles, styrofoam cups, cans, papers, plastic bags, food, wrappers, cigarette butts, etc.

Well, that’s what happened when we took our kids to Long Beach one weekend.  We took them there as we really like the city of Long Beach due to the number of places to see and things to do.  I could personally recommend a number of them including: The Queen Mary, Aquarium of the Pacific, Shoreline Village, Lion’s Lighthouse, The Pike at Rainbow Harbor (includes a Ferris wheel and carousel), whale watching, etc.

Unfortunately one of the only things I couldn’t recommend is going into the water, especially just east of Shoreline Village & Marina, as the amount of waste and pollution we saw down at water’s edge was astonishing.

When we first arrived at the beach, we could see about 50+ kids and adults playing in the water.  We figured we’d go and let my daughter stick her feet in the water.  However, when we got down to the water, we noticed the people (mostly kids) were playing in the waves with trash and garbage all around them – literally playing in amongst the pollution – and nobody seemed to mind.

Now, the water is definitely better than it was a few months ago, but maybe the City of Long Beach and more of the businesses in and around Shoreline Village should jump on board with Justin Rudd to promote and contribute to his monthly 30-minute Beach Clean-up.  This way parents, children and the community as a whole would be involved in getting and keeping the beaches…and just as importantly, the water, pollution-free.