This last weekend I gathered some swimmers together to volunteer for Coastal Cleanup Day at Surfrider Beach here in beautiful Malibu. I drive past Surfrider every day and usually it is picturesque and lovely with the whitewashed pier in the background and dozens of black dots which are surfers waiting in the water for the next perfect wave. So when someone told me that beach had an F rating for beach cleanliness I was very surprised.
That Saturday I found out why. On the foggy morning the swimmers and I split off from the rest of the Pepperdine group and got to work with two bags for trash and one for cigarette butts. We scoured the beach and the area next to the road picking up everything from bottle caps to love poems off the ground. Then when we picked that area clean we climbed all around the rocks next to the pier and man it was a goldmine for trash. I have never seen so much trash in my life. Jack in the Box meals beer bottles baby diapers and even clothing were scattered in between the rocks in cracks. I felt like I was climbing mountains risking life and limb to get in little holes and pick up Starbucks Frappuccino bottles. My teammates Shannon and Martha were on cigarette butt duty and by the end of our two-hour volunteering we had collected as a team over 600 cigarette butts from the beach. 600! It was a workout certainly climbing from rock to rock but also a humbling and satisfying experience.
I had no idea there was so much trash on our beautiful Malibu beaches and I was also pleasantly surprised by the amount of impact five athletic girls can have picking up trash in a little under two hours. We did not end up winning the cigarette butt contest that Heal the Bay put on (we got beat out by an elementary school) but instead we got something much more special: our own personal satisfaction. After washing my hands about 10 times and showering fully I laid on my couch knowing I had made an impact in my community and it only took a couple hours out of my Saturday afternoon.
We have been so blessed to live on this gorgeous campus I would hope that we don’t take it for granted or ruin it with our trash. – Kayleen Hicks junior on Pepperdine’s Women Swimming and Diving Team