One Small Step #PlanetOrPlastic

#planetorplastic

I looked at the horizon as we sped across the ocean in our motor boat, to go clean up some garbage. As I looked into the distance, I saw a great floating mass of the stuff. It was all I could see. All I could think about.

As we approached it, there began to be more garbage floating around aimlessly. Fated to become part of the island. To make it bigger. To make it more permanent.

There were tires and bags. Cups and bottles. Not only plastics, though. There were dead things, too. Many dead things. Dead fish floating on the surface of the water. Dead birds on top of the garbage island.

We readied our nets to catch garbage and threw them into the water. We'd brought along long sticks and shovels so that we could collect the garbage more efficiently.

We finally came close to the island. The garbage stretched on for at least a mile. There were other clean up teams in the distance. I began poking at some garbage and ushering it into our nets. 

As soon as we started moving the garbage, the smell hit us. We could already smell it before when it was easy to ignore, but now it was impossible.

After a few hours of working, I took a break. I stared into the water, trying to ignore the smell, when I saw something on top of a little float of garbage. I could barely make out what it was. I grabbed one of our hand-held nets and ran back to were I had been standing. I looked for it again, but couldn't find it. I began to panic inside and was about to call someone over to help me when I spotted it again. I reached down and fished it out of the water. I brought it up and pulled it out:

A little bird. Stuck to a piece of trash and dying.

I called everyone and showed them what I had found. Everyone jumped into action. There was a wildlife volunteer on board who knew some things about the care of birds. He took the bird from my hands and called for water and food. Somebody grabbed a water bottle and I gathered whatever food I could find.

The man sat down with the bird, soaked a cloth in water, and began dripping a little into the bird's mouth, trying to get it to perk up. It was obvious that the bird was alive, but we weren't sure if it would make it. After a few minutes of receiving attention, it began to hop around. We took that as a sign that we had been  successful, so we fed it some bread and took turns holding it for the rest of the day.

When we got back to land, we felt like we had barely made a dent in the cleanup, but we knew that the day had been a success. A little bird told us so.