Ladies of a certain age like to gather. They play cards, drink tea, chat. Oh, look at that. Yeah. Not this group. This is perfect. Beautiful plastic bottle. These are the self-proclaimed Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, Ola for short. They are cleaning the freshwater ponds in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Trash diving as a group for fun.
What is a good day in the garbage Department? Hundred pounds. Hundred pounds?
Eighty-four-year-old Susan Bauer came up with the idea herself.
Water is magic. You're immersed in it. You're in a different world.
A swimmer and a naturalist. She was seeing too much garbage along with her beloved turtles, so she got her friends together.
I've always loved nature. Wanted to do something at my age to give back. It's a skill I didn't even know I had, finding trash in ponds.
There are strict rules on membership. Divers older than 64, no men, and they have to pass the tryouts.
You have to swim a half a mile in under 30 minutes, but you also have to be able to handle a mile.
Water's murky. There are snapping turtles, there are eels. So it's too bad that the cutoff is 64 years old.
I'd totally be in there helping them. They pull up some remarkable things: car batteries, garden gnomes, and the find of all time, a toilet bowl. But in the end, the benefit is greater than just the cleaned up ponds.
When you finish one of these days, how do you feel?
Empowered, tired, and like I'm 10 years old.
We realized that we were a lot happier when we came out of the water than when we went into the water.
Because big garbage is big joy. That is success. Stephanie Gosc, NBC News, Sandwich, Massachusetts.
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We meet a group of women aged 64 to 84 making it their mission to clean up the waters off Cape Cod. They call themselves the ...