Waste from a dump pours out into the ocean. Debris and pollution enter the natural environment. Add fifty years or more.
The histories of these sites are pretty much all the same: A stunning lack of regard for our world, and the perception that the ocean can absorb any injury, followed by decades of healing by the forces of nature.
Glass beach on Kauai:
Well over a hundred years ago it was decided, for whatever reason that the small area of shoreline that is now known as Glass Beach was designated as a dumping site for much of Kauai's discarded items. Cars were dumped here, large metal items of all kinds, bottles, windshields and all sorts of junk. Over the course of time the ocean has worked its wonders and melded the shards of glass and fragments into smooth and circular touch stones of every color imaginable.
Fort Bragg CA:
Early in the 20th century, residents of Fort Bragg pitched their household waste -- glass, kitchen appliances, and sometimes whole cars -- over these cliffs, then owned by Union Lumber Company and known locally as "The Dumps."
North Beach, WA
Apparently in the early 20th century, Port Townsend residents used to dump their garbage at North Beach, said Marge Samuelson, Jefferson County Research Center archivist. .... on June 23, 1938, the members of the City Council decided that the North Beach area eastward was too precious for a public dump site, so they ordered it dynamited.
At that point the city decided to take its garbage to a new site at Middle Point -- the Glass Beach area. There it operated until 1962 ...
There are dozens or perhaps hundreds of these sites all over the world.
And now, these former dump sites are hot spots for collectors. Some people collect beach glass as part of their business, incorporating the pieces into jewelry or selling rare pieces for prices that approach what you could get for a first edition Charizard Pokemon card. Other collectors are avid hobbyists.
Demand is so great that some beaches are being denuded of the glass treasures, causing lamentation and reminiscences of the good old days when the beaches were inches deep in glass. At the Fort Bragg CA glass beaches, collection of the sea glass is now prohibited by law.
What gives? Why the fascination?
The attraction starts with a very basic truth - finding pretty objects is fun. It's either instinctive or so deeply buried in our core cultural backgrounds that it's hard to tell the difference.
With sea glass, there's the additional element of a feel-good story. Given a few decades, nature really can work over the the ugly hand we humans deal to it, and make something beautiful. Along with its aesthetic beauty, each piece of sea glass is a symbol of redemption, gracefully wearing and tumbling away our sins from prior years.
[Irony alert or full circle? Endangered monk seal above rests on a glass beach.]
These days, we don't intentionally pour dumpsters full of trash directly into the ocean, at least in the United States. New York City was famous for barging their trash to dump site offshore, but ended the practice with solid waste in 1934 and with sewage in 1992.
It's the kind of change that makes you believe, for just a moment, that we can make a shift to living in some kind of balance. That we can stop dumping, stop polluting. We can collect our trinkets of forgiveness from the sea, and go forward in a more responsible way.
But the ocean is still losing, badly. The new demon invading our oceans is plastic. The quantities are astounding, as shown in a recent
University of Georgia study
Their study, reported in the Feb. 13 edition of the journal Science, found between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2010 from people living within 50 kilometers of the coastline. That year, a total of 275 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated in those 192 coastal countries.
The quantities are unimaginable - and the results are mostly hidden from our direct view. Again from the article about the UGA study:
But knowing how much plastic is going into the ocean is just one part of the puzzle, Jambeck said. With between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons going in, researchers like Law are only finding between 6,350 and 245,000 metric tons floating on the ocean's surface.
Unlike glass, plastic does not wear to beautiful, jewelry grade keepsakes. Instead, the material breaks into finer and finer particles over time, fouling ecosystems world-wide. Plastics are routinely found
in the bellies of fish and birds, often killing them.
And by its nature, plastic doesn't need to be deliberately dumped in order to make it into the ocean. When we don't pay attention, it floats away, or is blown by the wind. The perception and overwhelming usage of plastic as disposable rather than a durable good worsens everything.
The waste has accumulated into vast floating garbage patches, and fills even the most remote beaches, even places hundreds of miles from any permanent habitation.
If you go to a shore - anywhere - you will find plastic and other debris. Stuffed in crannies in the rock. Washed up on the beaches, at the high tide mark. Buried in the sand. There is no escape. When we go for a beach walk in Washington state, sometimes we bring a bucket, and there is no problem filling it.
The assault by plastic is combined by other abuses on our ocean, especially acidification from CO2 emissions, warming, overfishing, marine noise, and other pollutants.
It can still be difficult to think of the oceans as limited. Physically, the vast waters seem overwhelming as we may look out on them. Yet our activity has found a way to fill the oceans of the world.
Where any one of us may feel small, 7,298,926,637 humans, with our lifestyle demands that increase every year, have pushed our little fish tank to the brink. Unlike the fish tanks we're used to, there is no change of water available for this one - we have to survive with what we have.
Perhaps the glass beaches represent a warning of what awaits us. Even as the web of life suffers from our excesses, the physical forces of nature will wear away all of our works. We hasten the day of our end, every time someone misuses the ancient prophesy that humans will have dominion over the earth, applying the shallow and cursed meaning of dominion, being "ours to manipulate for pleasure," instead of the full meaning and its accompanying sacred duty - ours to love, respect, protect and care for.