I made it, everyone! The Dirty Thirty. The Double Quinceañera. 30,000 pounds of trash.
It’s been a hell of a ride. You can’t spend 163 days in the mangroves collecting and lugging 15 tons of trash on your back without accumulating some scars along the way. Stepping on an upright nail was an experience. Slicing open the entire right side of my ribcage with a sharp branch produced an alarming amount of blood. Then there were the full-body skin infections and allergic reactions. I can’t count how often I sprained my ankles, shoulders, or back. I’ve also come uncomfortably close to heat stroke more times than any rational person ever should.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I loved it.
Those who have joined my cleanups know that giant pieces of trash turn me giddy. The bigger and heavier the better. Does it look like it’d take an excavator to unearth and a team of oxen to carry off? Watch me do it with a piece of scrap metal, sheer masochistic obstinacy, and an unhinged, Cheshire cat grin. There’s something wrong with me. It’s pathological, I know. But I definitely don’t want the cure, whatever it is.
To my loved ones’ eternal consternation, I get up every Saturday morning and trudge into the mangroves to collect other people’s garbage while clouds of mosquitos do their level best to lift me bodily from the shin-deep mud. Occasionally, I’ll take friends or volunteers. Many stop answering my texts, but enough unreconstructed psychopaths keep coming back that I, along with many other equally crazed individuals and organizations, have helped build a local movement that advocates for our coastal ecosystems.
I already wrote extensively on my personal motivations for this work. Regardless, online trolls often assert that real, selfless public servants would clean the mangroves without announcing it to the world—presumably purging every iota of pride from their souls through perfectly silent self-flagellating to avoid the remotest possibility that passersby might hear a wayward cry, feel any tinge of inspiration, and congratulate them on their sacrifice.
Well, you wouldn’t be reading this piece if I hadn’t meticulously recorded my work and posted it on social media. I wouldn’t have been able to show my fellow South Floridians the scope and scale of this problem. I would not have been featured in The Miami Herald, The Weather Channel, Reuters, Runner’s World, or Despierta América, missing the opportunity to spread this message to millions around the world.
In essence, I spent the last eight years running a public relations campaign to raise awareness about the threat trash poses to our oceans, mangrove forests, hardwood hammocks, Everglades, and other priceless natural habitats. I’ve picked up a few things as a professional environmental public relations consultant and I deploy them upon returning home from my trashy escapades. Nevertheless, rather than embarking on the grueling work of publishing white papers on the subject, I chose the easy route of picking up tons of garbage in a swamp.
People often ask how they can directly help. I work in very sensitive environments, so I can’t lead dozens of folks to tramp through the mangroves every weekend. However, I post all my public cleanups well ahead of time on social media (@andrewotazo on Instagram and just about everywhere else).
Well-meaning friends basically forced me to incorporate a nonprofit, but it’s currently inactive because I feel weird about taking people’s money. If you absolutely insist on donating to help cover the cost of bags, equipment, and injuries, you can find me on Patreon (Clean Our Coasts). Or not. Whatever.
Much more importantly, I need you to pester the absolute shit out of your municipal, state, and federal elected officials to pass legislation and regulations to decrease the unending tide of trash flowing into our oceans. Call them, write them, text them, make them miserable until they agree to disassemble truly moronic policies like Florida’s preemption law that don’t allow local governments to pass their own plastic bag bans. Trust me when I insist you’ll do much more good drafting an email to your state representative than spending a couple of hours with me in the mangroves.
Upon entering your kitchen, if you notice the sink overflowing and flooding the floor, your first instinct should be to close the faucet, not grab a mop. This is exactly what we must do with plastic pollution: stop the flow at its source. That unfortunately means engaging with the sociopaths running our government. Otherwise, I could spend the rest of my life picking up 300,000 pounds of trash with no long-term positive effect.
So, if you feel remotely inspired by my work, you have your marching orders and I have mine. Should you happen to hear a primal cry of frustration and/or pain while walking by the mangroves, just know it might be your friendly neighborhood amateur swamp trash collector, having the time of his life.
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