Thursday, January 13, 2011

Alison Dyer Re-Opens the Rubbish Rainbow Challenge


Long-time readers may recognize this picture from a couple of years ago!

I'd been inspired to set up this shot by a post Alison Dyer had done on her blog a couple of years back. She somehow ran across it this morning & said "Hey Bonnie, so sorry - I just found this entry. So glad you thought of taking up the Rainbow Garbage Challenge. Perhaps we have to put it out there again for the upcoming paddling season. Any paddler who make a 'rainbow garbage' out of available beach garbage - please send me a photo (the more high res the better)!
cheerz, Alison"

Here's the story behind the photo:



I'd gotten the idea to do this over on Alison Dyer's Squid Ink. She and a couple of her friends were stormbound on an island one day last summer & while killing time, made a Garbage Rainbow. She's been documenting refuse problems in her area of Newfoundland as a personal project, and this was just a twist produced by the weather suddenly handing her some time to kill, but she'd suggested that it might be an interesting project for kayak bloggers who are interested in sort of bringing people's attention to the astounding amount of crap we see out there to do the same in their own areas.

I'd left a comment saying that sounded like fun & I'd probably do one sometime once the weather warmed up enough to make beachcombing fun. See, I had this crazy idea that it was actually going to take me time to get the full spectrum. Ha. Silly me.

It's a little depressing how wrong I was. TQ & I stopped for a quick break on Ruffle Bar on Saturday. Nothing fancy, we just wanted to have a little tea & stretch our legs for a bit. I collected this mini-rainbow in about two minutes, from a shoreline space of just a couple of square yards. I was standing up near the high-water mark, where a lot of the trash gets stuck in the brush along the shoreline. I looked around & realized I was seeing just about every color I needed. Those that were missing, I found just a few steps away.

1 comment:

Pandabonium said...

We almost did that without even trying while playing a game scooping up rubbish from lake Hinuma while we sailed last October - Catch of the Day. It was right after a storm, so a lot of stuff had been washed into the lake. Depressing is the word.