We spent Saturday on Shi Shi Beach, participating in Washington’s annual Coast Cleanup, which basically means hauling as much plastic debris off the beach as you can while reluctantly leaving at least as much more uncollected due to limited time and hauling capacity. It’s really eye-opening to see how much plastic washes up on even a remote, wilderness beach like this one. Plastic is an amazingly useful material, but when it ends up in the ocean, its durability means that it hangs around for a long time, just breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces. Worse, these float, so they don’t get entombed in sediment but instead often get eaten. Wild animals die with their guts full of plastic bits.