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South Carolina Trash Can Washes Up On Shores Of Ireland

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Kevin Harness Contributor
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A trash can from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, traveled nearly 4,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean and washed up Sunday on the shores of Ireland.

Keith McGreal, a resident on the west coast of Ireland, discovered the trash can when it washed up the beach, he was out on the beach while taking a stroll with his family as the trash can washed up, WMBF News reported. (RELATED: Rock-Solid Frozen Whale Washes Up On Beach And Officials Don’t Know How To Get Rid Of It)

The trash can was weathered down from its journey across the Atlantic Ocean, but Myrtle Beach’s logo remained intact. McGreal claimed it was rare for him and his family to find a lost object that was identifiable and that said object could actually be traced back to its original location, according to WMBF News.

“This is like a message in the bottle. The fact I’m talking to you, people on social media, it’s opening up those channels of communication between two communities on either side of the world and that for me is important,” McGreal said, according to WMBF News.

McGreal added that the discovery taught his family about how objects lost in the water can travel over great distances.

The city of Myrtle Beach does not know exactly when they lost a trash can, but officials have speculated that it may have got caught in a storm. Usually, when some kind of weather event like a storm or a hurricane is about to hit, Myrtle Beach removes their trash cans from the beaches, according to the outlet.

“It’s not all that unusual actually,” executive director of the Center for Marine and Wetland Studies at Coastal Carolina University, Paul Gayes said, according to WMBF News. “There’s a large-scale circulation in the Atlantic Ocean and we’re familiar with one arm of that current which is the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a very strong, warm current that runs from South to North along the East Coast and North America.”

According to experts, the moral of the story is that people should pay more attention to the objects that could be floating around in the water, WMBF News reported.

The trash can is now being used as a receptacle along the beach where McGreal and his family found it, according to WMBF News.