Sum of a Beach

For those hungry for hard-and-fast analysis, CMC will compact the 1991 trash data and release a summary by Memorial Day 1992. They may have to assign a team of translators to the report-preparation team, though -- and not only to negotiate the return of that Indian cigarette pack. The Cleanup, which has included Canada, Mexico, and Japan in the past, will add Greece, Israel, Norway, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic, among others, to its roster of participants.

In one of her last lucid moments before plunging into eight grueling months of number crunching, Lovett points out that the annual reports may not accurately reflect the condition of the nation's coastline, especially given the vastly different patterns of beach care: "In some places, the Coastal Cleanup may be dealing with only two months of garbage; someone may have come through and taken care of it at the beginning of the summer. But there's the flip side of that also, the fact that in other places, we're cleaning where no one ever goes.