Litterwalk - Saraholmen

Finally, I did my first proper litterwalk. I've had a couple of #litterwalk postings earlier, but that was more "look at this weird things we found while skiing" than a proper litter walk. I'm anchored up at an idyllic place inside islands in Bærum - the garbage here is almost certainly local as it's a barrier of islands between here and the sea, and the islands looks so clean and nice from here, actually I didn't expect to find any garbage at all. This first photo was actually taken Sunday morning, but it's my current position. I decided to take the island to the left, my intention was to walk around all of it and collect what I could find.

I don't even need to take the garbage I find with me. There are garbage bins provided on the place. Hmm ... and there seems to be garbage on the ground as well

Plastic, plastic, everywhere ...

The piece of wood below I left - though, it does have a dangerous nail in it. I did took some other small piece of wood that I suspect may be impregnated.

I wonder if someone has been shitting here, using wet-wipes to dry up. If so, the shit is long gone, but the wetwipes are still in place. I didn't wear gloves, this was the most yucky thing I picked up.

Such a lovely small peninsula ... wonder if there are any garbage here?

Yes, indeed ...

Lineup of garbage. Actually, I found lots more. The long grass to the left seems to have been a good magnet for garbage, found lots of plastic, styrofoam and different junk inside it ...

... and even a football.

"Shampoo" for the boat.

Let me rant a bit ... boating people (and that includes me) are actually quite awful people. Most of us don't throw garbage intentionally on the sea, but most of us do lose lots of items, including plastic items in the sea. We use lots of rope, almost all of them are made from plastic materials, and inevitably every now and then we lose whole ropes or shreds of ropes into the sea. To get away from the city and all the diesel-powered vehicles there, we use diesel-powered vehicles that we "park" directly in the nicest spots of nature we can find.

And this long piece of ... some thermo-insulating cover for sitting on, I believe.

Even without that thing, my garbage bag is already starting to become quite full

Now what's this ... someone has made a cross. I would have just left it if the rope would have been hemp or cotton ... but unfortunately the rope used is synthetic, plastic. Quite some work to remove it ...

Two and a half minute later ...

Boaters always need rope, and this rope actually looked like brand new rope. But it was poor quality, not the kind of rope that I need most, and I didn't really bother to keep it, so into the garbage bin with it.

Now my garbage bag was completely full, and it was bothersome to move around with both the full garbage bag and the football. So far I've spent a bit more than 20 minutes picking garbage, and I've done just a small stretch of the planned round-trip around the island. There was MUCH more garbage than expected!

Oh ... look at those bins. They must have been standing there since the autumn, with plastic garbage bags that by now have become quite torn with the wind ... efficiently spreading more plastic garbage around.

Here is my contribution. I'll write an email and inform about those garbage bins.

Hm, I should do some local efforts in the area around the bin, too ... but the football I'll just leave there. Maybe there will come some kids and play with it. Maybe I'll take my kids there soon so they can play with the ball.

There used to be a factory on this island, so there is quite some junk left behind from that time as well ... but the bricks and iron sort of belongs to the island, the plastic certainly doesn't.