Message in a barrel: Myrtle Beach trash bin makes landfall in Ireland

TORONTO —
Keith McGreal was flying his drone along the waterfront when he stumbled upon a giant blue trash bin owned by the City of Myrtle Beach.

But the shoreline he was surveying isn’t in the city’s state of South Carolina. McGreal lives across the Atlantic Ocean, on the western coast of Ireland.

“As I got closer, I could see a white label on it and it said, ‘trash only,’” he told CTV National News. “In Ireland we don’t call it trash, we call it rubbish.”

After snapping photos of the barnacle-covered barrel, McGreal emailed Myrtle Beach City Hall to show them their property had washed ashore in the village of Mulranny, supposedly after a journey of 5,500 kilometres.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh, shoot, we’ve lost a trash can,’ and my second thought was, ‘It made its way to Ireland of all places!’” Mark Kruea, Myrtle Beach’s public information director, told CTV National News. “[We] then sent him an email back saying, ‘Gee, thanks for the heads up. We wish it had stayed put on our beach, but glad to know that it found a new home.’”

City officials believe the barrel got swept into the ocean during a storm, where it then proceeded on its epic journey across the pond.

But while this barrel of trash made landfall, tonnes of garbage pollutes the world’s oceans.

Advocates at the recent COP26 climate summit in Scotland were pushing world leaders to protect oceans from pollution and trash. Experts say there’s roughly five trillion pieces of plastic debris in ocean waters, forming giant patches of floating trash.

Back in Mulranny, the journey of the American trash bin is being treated as a message in a bottle – or rather, a barrel.

“We were talking the other day with the principal of the school, and she said they’re going to use this as a learning opportunity for the kids,” McGreal said.