Name: Juliette Pepe
Social Justice Group: 2023-2024, Climate Change: Rising Sea Levels / Plastic Pollution
Date of Fieldwork: February 4, 2024
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Beach Cleanup at Rock-away Beach
Type of Fieldwork: [69]
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:
Elias and I decided to do a beach cleanup for one of our fieldwork. We thought it was a good hands on fieldwork that would support our cause, and we would also learn a lot from. When figuring out where we should go for the beach cleanup, we ended up deciding to go to a nearby beach called Rock-away beach. Rock-away beach is a local beach that is only an hour away from Manhattan on a boat. We also decided to go on Sunday for a few hours, to get the best experience.
When it was finally time for the trip, I met Elias and his mother (Lizzy) at 10:00 am at pier 11 and we took the boat to Rock-away beach. This boat ride took us about an hour before we got to Rock-away. We exited the boat and started walking to the beach. It wasn’t a long walk, it was about 5 minutes, but it was enough for us to get in the spirit of walking and picking up trash. When we got to the beach we started picking up trash with grabbers. We were finding a lot of trash most of them being plastic bags, but there were many other things. There were many objects but there were a few that I found to be insane: a tire, a toilet, a tampon applicator, a plastic glove, a hand warmer, and many more. These just prove that we are wasting a great amount of plastic that we should not be wasting. We even inspired two people to clean up and pick up trash which felt heartwarming. We did this for about two hours then had a snack break and went back to the boat. We rode back and went our separate ways.
This experience was eye opening and led me to learn a few things. I learned that my topic of plastic pollution is often ignored. For example everyone sees a piece of trash, but only a small few actually pick it up. People are ignoring plastic pollution and just hoping that it will solve itself, but it won’t, it will just keep getting worse and worse. During the process Elias said “It feels like we are barely making a dent” which really got me thinking. He was right that we were barely pitching in but it’s still good that we are even doing this in the first place. When we all only make a small dent then we will have all done so much. This applies to activism and how we need to come together to actually make a DENT in society’s problems. This can be achieved by just helping out a little, because when you help out a little, you will inspire others, who will inspire others, who will inspire others, this keeps going on and on which makes a great difference. To conclude we need to come together and fix what we have done with the plastics
