July Happenings

It’s been a rough summer, but I am thankful that I was still able to educate and learn from others through several meetings and doing a local clean-up.

At the beginning of the month, I was able to give a talk (with CDC guidelines in place of course!) about my Trash for Turtles (Plus) project to the Glynn Environmental Coalition. As part of my Youth Ocean Conservation Summit mini-grant, I was also able to give out two t-shirts for a little activity. Afterwards, people asked some great questions and gave great insights. One lady especially made a big impact on me. She said that the pollution is a direct reflection of ourselves. We need to set aside our differences and work together for a better world. We have to fix inside ourselves, then we can help fix the outside by making the environment cleaner. We just have to change our mentalities. I am really grateful we were able to have this talk, else I would have missed the opportunity to meet her and hear a new perspective.

My family and I also went out to the 121 Boat Landing along the Satilla River and did another clean-up. Even though we have done this boat ramp loads of times, there was still so much disgusting trash. This time there weren’t any tires or mattresses (good news!), but there were still lots of cigarette butts, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and even an emptied bag of water balloons. It’s so sad to see that no matter how many times we go out there, we find people continuing to trash it up. Why can’t we keep our own play areas clean? It is very discouraging some times, but I know that at least the trash we picked up will not contribute to the problem.

Finally, I was given the opportunity to meet my county’s new recycling intern. She is a local high school student working with our county to learn about recycling needs in our community. This will help us get better programs and collaboration with our local businesses to make recycling more prevalent. Right now, we don’t have many opportunities to recycle in our community. I look forward to hearing about her results, and I hope we can work together in the future to continue making our community better!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this update and are staying safe and healthy! This upcoming year is going to be quite different for Trash for Turtles, but stay tuned for details!

(Oh and one more thing before you go… you’re JAWSOME!)