07.12.2019 – An open circle (St Nicholas Beach Clean Up)

Today a small but very engaged group of people joined Lobosonda and Zerowaste Madeira to clean the beach of Madalena do Mar. A lot of debris is washed up along this vast rocky beach that stretches alongside the main road of the quaint little fishing village but a lot of the waste occurs closer to the road rather than the waterline. This already became evident during our previous cleanup, the Spring Beach Cleanup, where 30 volunteers helped us clean over half of the beach and proved raw material to Bordalo II in celebration of Worlds Oceans Day 2019. Most of the collected waste was concentrated near the bars and restaurants along the road near the beach. 

Today we cleaned the other half of the beach and saw a similar pattern; the majority of the waste, particularly cigarette buds, pieces of metal and plastic packaging, were lying near the wall far from the actual waterline. This allowed us to assume that the majority of the waste originates from the coastline, rather than being washed up onto shore, so we left the area in good spirits, positive that we had prevented more waste from entering the ocean.

An outing on the following day with my good friend Anna, who had also helped us during our cleanup during her stay in Madeira, brought back a sobering reality. After travelling to the north of the island we decided to visit the natural sandy beach of Seixal to enjoy the spectacular view. We were shocked at the tiny pieces of plastic scattered across the beach and realised that so much more plastic must have been hidden below the surface of the several rocks of Madalena do Mar. Considering the alarming rate humanity is polluting the oceans this should have actually been clear to us from the very beginning.

This fact, however, should not break our spirits. On the contrary it should motivate us even more and make us all the more fierce in our mission to do better in future. Every small step counts and every bit of large plastic removed relieves the ocean of one of its most dangerous pollutants. We have to be persistent in our hope that we can make things better. We are after all part of an open circle, where our behaviour is reflected in the health of our natural environment. So if we behave ourselves and are good to our planet, it will also be good to us. 

Thanks again to Zerowaste Madeira and everyone who came to help us out today, the world cannot get enough of people who are brave enough to try and make a difference.

By Paula Thake