Tackling plastic, three pieces at a time

In Western Bay in eastern Newfoundland, the battered asphalt of Side Road and Lighthouse Road merge into one and then peter out into a narrow gravel track. The road turns up into barren hillsides towards the foundations and root cellars of the resettled community of Bradley’s Cove. Just before the turn, the road gives you a glimpse of a narrow cove filled with rounded grey beach rocks, a worn aluminum open boat pulled up on the stone, outboard motor turned up and to the side out of the water. And at the top of the narrow road down into the gap between sharp grey cliffs, a sign: “Take 3 for the Sea.” It’s a simple, catchy slogan and an extension of the old saying about woods travel: “Pack it in? Pack it out.” In 2009, a marine ecologist, Roberta Dixon-Valk, and a youth educator, Amanda Marechal, wanted to come up with an idea for simple actions that could help the environment. Joined by environmentalist Tim Silverwood, they came up with the core idea of “Take 3 for the Sea”: “Take three pieces of rubbish with you when you leave the beach, waterway or... anywhere, and you have made a difference.” A decade later, the movement now takes 10 million pieces of trash out of the natural environment worldwide. The impact is, admitted, only touching on a small part of the problem; it’s literally the tip of the ocean plastic iceberg. Eight million tons of plastic are either dumped into the ocean, or are carried into the world’s oceans by waterways or wind — and given the fact that plastic doesn’t just disappear, that eight million tons is added to cumulatively every year. But a small part is far better than nothing at all. In Atlantic Canada, the problem of ocean plastics is, well, everywhere. From virtually indestructible cigarette butts — yes, they are made from tiny scraps of plastic sheeting — to coffee cup lids to plastic bags and drink bottles, there’s scarcely a stretch of seashore where you can’t find plastic waste. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the beach in a national park in Prince Edward Island, on a remote spot in Newfoundland and Labrador, or in the self-styled “Canada’s ocean playground” of Nova Scotia. You’ll find plastic trash, if not directly underfoot, then certainly nearby. You can do something, or you can choose to do absolutely nothing, sit on your backside and complain about the trash all around you. You can pick up three pieces of ocean trash and take them out of the cycle. And you can do it at a spot as small as a grey stone beach wide enough for just one boat, on a dirt road heading for the footprint of a town that no longer even exists.