When you find your first piece however, all of a sudden you find another, and another, little bits of coloured plastic, Styrofoam, a paper cup, a piece of rope tangled in a pile of bull kelp. Everywhere you look you see something geometrically shaped, these unnatural shapes and colours buried in the sand, wedged in between logs, hiding in the dune grass. A shiny object catches your eye, a beer can, pieces of soft plastic, a glass bottle reflects the light to get your attention.
You look at your bag and are surprised at how much trash you've already found and you've only walked 20 meters down the beach. There are big objects like boat floats, just about enough articles of clothing to make an outfit, a tire, an old lawn chair, then the amount of small things add up so quickly, you can't believe you've found enough cigarette butts to fill the grande coffee cup you found earlier.
You finally get to the end of the beach and turn around thinking you've gotten everything, but you quickly find you missed so much, how could that be? Garbage is the best at hiding. It knows all the best spots to squeeze into.
With every piece of garbage you pick up, you notice something; The act of picking up a single piece of garbage holds an immense amount of humanity, and at the same time is instantly satisfying. The removal of anthropogenically produced trash from the beach makes you feel good about yourself, but it also holds so much more meaning:
Respect for your coast, responsibility for human behavior, as well as being personally rewarding.