Stop Shoving Coins Into the Giant’s Causeway

Almost 60 million years ago, a series of natural events—including volcanic eruptions, erosion, glacial movement, and sea level rise—created Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway: a coastal area made of over 40,000 hexagonal basalt stone pillars. Today it is a world-renowned tourist destination, and the hundreds of thousands of yearly visitors are leaving their mark—but not in a good way. In a recent statement, the conservation charity National Trust is appealing to visitors to stop wedging coins between the Giant’s Causeway’s basalt rock columns. The coins are corroding and physically damaging the World Heritage Site, and as such, accelerating natural erosion processes, according to a report by the British Geological Survey. From countless padlocks on Parisian bridges to coins tossed into Rome’s Trevi Fountain each year, tourists seem obsessed with the idea of leaving something behind at iconic landmarks. But while the Catholic charity Caritas collected $1.52 million in 2022 from the T ... Read full article.