We made it. 

Hey. I'm Paul. Nice to meet you. I'm the Litter Pirate. Happy 2022, we made it!

LP started as a litter education project. I'm a teacher in Eastern North Carolina. I've lived all over the US and where I've settled now turns out to be the most littered. 7 years ago when I searched 'litter North Carolina' on various social media sites I got cats. Cat litter. How could this place be so trashed, much more trashed than the 6 other states I've lived in, and no one was talking about it? No one was hash-tagging about it?

So, I started litter picking. Originally I called my project the Jones County Litter Co-op. I had just moved from Seattle (where everything is a co-op lol). I thought people would wake up when they started seeing me pick along our roadsides. I thought they would join me (let's co-op!). I thought they would finally address the problem. They didn't.

I found a littered fork in the road. No really, I did. But it was also a figurative fork in the road. Keep picking or keep picking and do something more to make change. I'm a teacher so it made sense to dive into environmental education. Let's start a program where Litter Pirate goes around and teaches kids about litter and why it's bad.

I did for a minute. Dressed as a pirate, the litter pirate, I starting doing small talks and booking larger school assemblies. And then...COVID. No more visitors, no more assemblies. I reorganized, started the litter pirate podcast, and kept picking. 

Like for a lot of people, 2021 turned out to be a little worse than 2020 for my little Litter Pirate project. Frustrated with the lack of innovation from litter picking organizations that hardly ever innovate (why would I think they would start!?), I learned a lot about plastic recycling and its ties to big oil (a.k.a. big plastic), litter picking organizations and their ties to big oil (KAB: I'm talking about you ya jerks), law enforcement and their non-prioritization of litter enforcement, and about so many organizations content in picking the same amount of litter from the same places year after year with no goals for more, no strategies for something different, and no support to upstream solutions like single-use plastic bans. Arrrrgh! turned to ugh real quick.

You know, pirates come and go. Projects start and they end. I'm not sure how long I can keep devoting time, energy, frustration, tears, and passion toward such slow moving change for my community, I'm not a young pirate anymore. But, it's an interesting journey for me and I hope you, I hope we, learn something along the way.

Find me on Instagram🥤🏴‍☠️
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