I spoke about noticing patterns. This morning as I was heading back to the landing area I stopped to pick up yet another butt. It rained last night and I’m guessing these butts were from yesterday afternoon. 
They were Marlboros, the kind with the medium brown color paper filter with a slightly speckled pattern. What I also noticed was the sand around it was discolored. I thought of the hundreds of toxins contained in those little bits of trash, leaching out into the sand by way of the rain and the impact that has on the eco-system, birds, fish or turtles that may see it as food. We know that more and more animals have plastic and other trash in their stomachs. Unfortunately that doesn’t break down during the digestive process and thus accumulates in the stomach. Eventually the pattern of thinking that plastic is food will be the demise of the life form, as the stomach fills with undigestible matter there is less room for real food and the animal faces starvation.
We are powerful and have within our grasp the ability to keep our beaches cleaner.
I took a photo of the Marlboro in the sand showing the rain patterned indentations in the soaked sand. From where I stood in the sand, I turned 90 degrees to the right and took another photo.
I could hardly see the butt, as it was nearly totally covered with sand, but the discolored sand was the give-away. I dug it out with my latex-covered hand and added it to my bag. I turned another 90 degrees, twice, and with each turn I documented and picked up another filter that was easily spotted, now that I knew the pattern. I’m going to take an educated guess that those four I found were stuck or dropped in the sand by one person. Day 8 of counting butts brought the total to 191.
Might I make a note on The Jar about brands collected?
Contemplate the implications of that.
