New Contributor: Bree Reynolds

I met my students this morning at 8:00 a.m. at the playground near PIC. The plan was to walk up the beach to Hopwood and pick up trash as we went. Once we started, I noticed that the beach was amazingly clean!


Thanks to regular clean up efforts from PIC and Hopwood students. Plus, being the 30th person in line to go down a beach isn't exactly an effective use of my garbage picking skills, since everything had already been removed by the people ahead of me. So I stayed behind near San Antonio Elementary School and helped with the illegal dump site Angelo mentioned before. We found the insides of a car, carefully wrapped in blanket scraps for hauling, old refrigerators, a pile of illegally harvested trochus, tires, an old couch, a few t.v.' s, vinyl floor tiles, and diapers, diapers diapers. People shouldn't have kids if they can't dispose of the waste properly, that's just nasty!!! I found rusting palette straps most likely from garment factories, a leg to a Barbie doll (which I kept) and a couple of other toys.


The sad thing is, I don't even think we made a dent. The whole time I kept thinking how do we stop this? How do we go about changing people's bad behavior?

No more Mr. Nice Guy

This morning 77 volunteers helped Beautify CNMI! remove 2,580 lbs of trash along the stretch of beach between Aguingan Point and San Antonio Elementary School. In terms of volunteer numbers, this was not our largest cleanup of 2007, but in terms of pounds of trash removed it was.

Inside one of the bags of household trash we found along the beach, one of our volunteers noticed a pair of receipts from Hollywood Video.

On January 7, 2007, somebody named Vany Andonius rented Miami Vice and Jet Li's Fearless. On January 11, Vany Andonius rented Crank, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Invincible (click on the scan of the receipts for a larger version).

After watching the movies (were they any good?), Vany chose to dispose of his (her?) household trash by dumping it on San Antonio Beach.

There is nobody named Vany Andonius listed in the CNMI Phone Book, so I need the readers of this blog to do me a favor:

If you know her, please call Vany Andonius' mother and tell her that Vany has been illegally dumping on our public beaches. I trust DEQ and DPS to do their jobs, but there is no greater authority than Mom.

Thank to everyone who showed up this morning to help us pick up trash! Thank you to Hopwood Junior High School for hosting the event and thank you to CAMI-CNMI, MINA, Marianas RC&D, Saipan International School, ISA CNMI, Rep. Kaipat, Rep. Tenorio, and Rep. Waki for bringing volunteers!

1st Pacific Island Club Cleanup of 2007

...and they didn't take any pictures!

PIC continued their assault on the litter on the beach fronting and just South of their hotel in San Antonio. 59 volunteers participated in another beach cleanup this morning.

Thank you, PIC!

(next time take pictures)

Pacific Islands Club Cleanup

47 volunteers from Pacific Islands Club Saipan woke up bright and early to clean up the beach south of their hotel in San Antonio.