Hi, LT. This was interesting. I'm glad you wrote it.

That sounds like a soul destroying place to be. I'd be worried about dirty needles amongst the rest of the debris you listed. Hope you kids had appropriate safety wear. Was the stairwell with the pile of clothes someone's sleeping quarters?

Well done on your effort tho, the planet thanks you!

The locals pass us and say it's great that people from other towns are coming in to keep their beach safe.

See this is what drives me absolutely insane about "people". Take on the damn responsibility for your own town! Find out what can be done and get involved!

I bet these same people whine about the trash and so on the rest of the year but don't think that it's up to them to do something.

Do they have a local paper or council? I would be telling them all about the organization and what you do and how locals can get involved.

I had the same reaction. Clean up your own damn beach, idiots!

This town is just egregious. One of the women who stopped us - actually the one who got the volunteer group notified and activated - said that the city refuses to put trash cans on the beach because they don't want the responsibility of emptying them; they also say it creates more trash and attracts birds etc. She'd been to the council and police about it already. But it needs to be a much more concerted effort.

To me, it's a simple behavioral issue. Human beings, as a species, are profoundly lazy and somewhat sneaky. They'll meet the standard they see around them. If there are trash cans within a reasonable distance, the majority of people use them; if not, and if they think there'll be no penalty (legal or social) for just leaving their trash, they'll just leave it. If you don't want trash on your beach, you have to act like you don't want it and give people incentives for throwing it away, and disincentives for littering.

Having grown up on the beaches of NJ, I know that this situation does not have to exist. NJ has the greatest population density of any state and has something like 25 million people within two hours' drive of the beaches. If any beaches were going to be filthy due to plain volume, NJ's beaches would be the ones. But over the years the state has realized that trash like that is ridiculously easy to prevent: iron trash barrels with lids and a recycling station every 50-100 yards on the beach, daily pickup in season, "carry in/carry out" signs, and ticketing for litterers. The problem is well under control.

Hampton, like all of New Hampshire, is trying to resist spending money. However, their standards are appalling and disgusting. This beach bordered on health hazard. They need to ante up for the trash stations and collecting, and the police need to ticket. This is a town, by the way, that survives solely on the income drawn from people in Boston and northward coming for a boardwalk/arcade/concert/partying location. They need the tourism. They like to blam the outsiders for littering, but in fact, they're telling the tourists it's fine to litter by having such low standards and obvious lack of care for their own town.

Also, you get really sick of our disposable society by picking up litter. I personally hate Dunkin Donuts right now - all those iced coffee plastic cups and foam cups - and McDonald's. I love running around with a drink too, but I wonder if more of us could manage the switch - just carry a water bottle or thermos, and when you want another beverage, sit down in the restaurant and drink it from a reusable container in a civilized fashion. Having "to go" drinks all day long from nonrecyclable containers is a pretty recent development in American culture and, waste-stream-wise, a pretty damaging one.

Ugh, it's such a nasty cycle. No one cares so the place looks like crap so no one cares about it and the town just dies on the vine. It's so sad.

Hmmm. I'm surprised that the people who are priced out of Boston haven't yet said, hey, wait! Beachfront property that hasn't been gentrified! We need more property taxes! Let's declare it blight, throw the locals out, take it by eminent domain, and then resell it to developers who will build luxury condos!

I'm sure that'll happen eventually, Melismata, but Hampton is a hard case and it's going to take serious work - plus rerouting the highway. It's on a skinny barrier beach surrounded by salt marsh.