I am so proud of the people of this community. For the past twenty years, I’ve been picking up litter on the Rio Del Mar beach about once a week, all year long (it began as rehab after knee surgery).
I have a mile and a half route. I don’t start from the parking lot where many of the beach goers are out-of-towners. I begin a little ways south where the first row of houses end, figuring that from there south, beachgoers are largely residents and guests.
I want to praise how beautifully you respect your beaches. In my weekly trek to Seascape and back, I rarely fill more than half a kitchen garbage bag with litter. What I find is almost all-unintentional litter: a plastic fork buried in the sand, a lost sock, a lone water bottle.
What it all points to is how conscious the people of Aptos are of taking care of the environment. You pick up after yourselves. If everyone did as well as you, there’d be no garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean.
— Jay Dravich, Aptos