The Surprising Truth Beneath the Sand: The Litter Clean-up Event

My name is Hartej, and I have been volunteering with KCT for over a year now. I have always cared about the environment. I like taking walks around my community and spending time in nature; it’s personally really calming and grounding for me.
I had been to a litter cleanup event with KCT once before as a teen volunteer.

Watching and helping other kids was a way to give back to my community that meant a lot to me. What surprised me was what we actually found on the beach. I expected some trash, but not the volume of it: far more cans and plastic bottles than I had anticipated, an almost absurd number of hair ties scattered across the sand, and glass bottles too, which I hadn’t expected at all.

I kept thinking that we had picked up all the trash, then I would find even more hidden behind a bush or buried in the sand. That experience stuck with me. It’s part of why I liked it so much.