Cleaning Boston Harbor

Hey everyone,
Sorry I haven't posted in a while - I've been super busy! I am really excited to share with you the
Environmental Activist project I am doing in my science class with two of my friends. We decided to do our project on pollution in the Boston Harbor. Here's a quick overview:

Just pickin' up some trash

Boston Harbor was once one of the most polluted waterways in the nation, and it is in the final stages of a major cleanup. The cleanup program has been going on for 30 years, and the goal was to clean out 300 years worth of pollution. Over the course of the cleanup, the environmental quality has improved significantly, as well as eliminating industrial waste and sludge that was being dumped into the Harbor.

Did you know that each year about fourteen billion pounds of trash are deposited into the ocean? This pollution in our oceans mainly consists of plastic, pesticides and herbicides, oil, sewage, and other garbage. Sea life is dying from choking, internal blockage, and injuries sustained from plastic, fishing wire, and other kinds of litter, as well as oil and other toxins.

Most of the trash we found was down by the waterline.

Our goal is to help protect the harbor from becoming as polluted as it was before the $3.8 billion cleanup program, and to help keep the underwater environment of the Boston Harbor safe for the animals that live there.

On Sunday, we went into the harbor to pick up some trash so that we could better understand the pollution (where, how much, what kinds) for our project.

We found a total of 10-20 pounds of trash!

The outing was really great, and we learned a lot of things that we needed to know for our project. We learned that in the parts of Boston where people live is very nicely maintained. A lot of work is put into making the harbor side look nice for locals as well as tourists. However, as we walked farther north and away from homes and neighborhoods, we noticed that there was a lot more trash. There were pieces of plastic, cigarette butts, bottle caps, to-go cups, styrofoam pieces, glass, plastic bottles, and much more. Someone had even left their bike, which was rusted on the rocky waterline. As we picked up all of these, we noticed that there were significantly less trash cans around the area. If there were more trash cans in the area, would people be more inspired to throw out their trash?
After a short time, we estimated that we had picked up between 10-20 pounds of trash. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay and pick up more, but we had a great idea of what our next steps should be. Our project 'to-do' list now includes

1. Email/write to businesses about trash around their property and ask them to put trashcans outside their facilities.
2. Raise money to buy trash cans where there is a lot of trash but no trash cans
3. Get people to pick up litter whenever they see some (hanging up signs, posting an inspirational video, ect.)

Help keep bags like this out of the harbor

I will keep you posted on our project. Until then, a few things you can do to help keep our oceans clean are:
Don't litter and pollute the ocean; if you see some plastic or other trash, pick it up; and most importantly help others to understand the consequences of marine pollution. This has to be a group effort.
So stop telling yourself that it's not your problem.
Stop reassuring yourself that someone else will clean up your mess.
Start asking yourself what you can do.
Start helping us to help the harbor.