Tulum Coastal Cleanup Results
Do you remember last week we told you we were about to participate in a coastal cleanup campaing in Tulum? well we did!, if you follow us in facebook you saw we were posting some real time photos while in location…We started early in the morning, coming to Sustainable Development manager) gave us instructions about what kind of garbage we should pick up and separate like aluminum, plastic and glass. Soon we realized there was a lot of garbage on the beach, all of them human made items like plastic bottles, ropes, bags, glass bottles, diapers and even sunglasses! how is this possible? we are all trying to take care of our garbage but this is getting out of control, tThe thing is that maybe many of this garbage has not even been droped in this very beach.
Tulum Coastal Cleanup Volunteer Team hardworking
Maybe you have heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a marine litter described sometimes as an “island of garbage” and some experts claim it is twice the size of the state of Texas. The amazing thing about this is that this is not the only garbage patch in the planet, so far we know about the North Atlantic Garbage Patch and the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch. This massive ammounts of garbage are located between the ocean gyres which are large system of rotating currents caused by the coriolis effect in conjunction with wind and vertical friction. This gyres concentrate the debris in the ocean and capture them so they stay almost in the same place year round, but as everything in the ocean they are influenced by the biggest weather systems in the planet: Hurricanes and El Niño. It is calculated that 80% of the debris contained in this patches are originated in the coasts and a 20% by the ships in transoceanic travels so if you ever wonder where the bottles with messages from Robinson Crusoe ended, almost for sure they will be in one of this patches. When hurricanes hit any of this patches they can separate any given ammount of debris reincluding them in the ocean currents and then travel to a coastal zone, also the currents by themselves carry debris in the current direction and sometimes they can reach the coast before they get captured by any of this patches.
Now you know a little bit more about ocean debris, let me share our results from the Tulum Coastal Cleanup, so far in 2 kilometers of beach we recovered:
- Plastics: 9 kilograms
- Glass: 11 kilograms
- Aluminuum: 3 kilograms
- Generic garbage: 28 kilograms
Some people were asking why we didn’t pickup the algae accumulated in the coast and we did not because it is part of the natural process of beach renewal, providing a microhabitat for species that serve as food for several species of birds in the coast, we were taking only debris which are human made hence the true polution of the beach.
We will be posting news and interesting articles in this section, stay in touch for more! Also if you want to see the album with all of the pictures we made during this event, visit our facebook page! (Link will take you directly to album page)
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