By Rich Osborne
Hey, Vashon, it’s summer! Time to relax for a moment and enjoy our victory. To remember all the Coho Salmon we just saved. Not to pretend that we are done, but to smile over a glass of something and look forward to next year.
I‘m talking beach tires, of course. In 2025 we took 127 tires off our beaches. We set a 2026 goal of more tires than 2025. (Hey! We’re Rotarians, it’s what we do.)
By our most recent count, I am so proud to announce that we removed 147 beach tires in 2026! Yay! Yay us! Well done, Vashon! And six of these were monster-huge truck or tractor tires weighing up to 500 lbs each. As one of the tire removers, I can assure you that these should each count as 10 or 20 regular tires. That would take us even higher, but who’s counting? I mean who other than me.
But I digress.
Kudos again to Vashon Rotary Club, Zero Waste Vashon, The Harbor School (who sent students to work with us), King County Solid Waste (who have commissioned “The Friends of the Trail” to transport the tires to Liberty Recycling in Puyallup), Vashon Parks Department and Vashon Rowing Club, (who hosted the beach tire staging area at Jensen Point), Vashon Land Trust, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (who sent a boat and four workers to help with the big tires), the Vashon Beachcomber, Engels Towing, and all of the neighborhood groups and individuals who volunteered their time, their tow trucks, their muscles, and their sweat and extreme attention to detail that made this project so successful and impactful by removing toxins from our fragile ecosystems.
I have a question. Does anyone else drive by a beach where a particularly difficult tire was pulled out and smile from a residual adrenaline rush of accomplishment? Maybe it’s just me.
Anyway, thanks everybody! Let’s do it again next year. In fact, you can help us now by finding tires for us to clear next year. The spring and summer are the best times during daylight low tides to locate half-buried tires in the intertidal zone. So as you walk your favorite Vashon-Maury beaches, remember to take your phone, and to keep your eyes peeled to let us know about your discoveries.And don’t forget, this program only deals with beach tires.
The best way to document latitude/longitude locations for iPhotos is to have location turned on and then the picture can be opened in the Photos Map view and it will show up on a map.
Also, when sending a tire geolocation, send it as an email, not as a text (as the texting strips out details that we need). vashonrotaryclub.org or steven.bergman@zerowastevashon.org
Again, thanks Vashon, you rock!
