California Coastal Cleanup: It’s Not Just for the Pacific Ocean
The California Coastal Commission is announcing that the state’s biggest volunteer event, California Coastal Cleanup Day, will be celebrating its 25th Anniversary with this year’s Oct. 24 statewide cleanup.
The Annual Cleanup, sponsored by the Coastal Commission and Whole Foods Market, will take place at more than 750 locations around the state. Desert residents, mark your calendars for Saturday, Oct. 24, 8 a.m. till noon, because the cleanup will take place at two locations on the Salton Sea. One is the fishing Pier at the State Recreation area North Shore and the other will be in Salton City on Yacht Club Dr. where the Old Yacht Club was located.
Volunteers may arrive at any time and spend as much time as they feel like helping out. All day or a half hour, all efforts are appreciated. The Cleanup is one of the State’s premier volunteer activities, annually bringing tens of thousands of volunteers to the state’s beaches and inland shorelines to remove the debris beaches have accumulated over the course of the year.
Directions to the sites are as follows; For Salton City take Expressway 86 to South Marina Drive, the main Salton City exit, and continue driving towards the Sea. Stop before you get wet. Just kidding. Yacht Club Drive is located at the point that the road starts to curves north and becomes North Marina Drive. Turn onto Yacht Club and continue to the shore. Crews will be cleaning up from 8 a.m. till noon.
For the North Shore site take State Route 111 on the east side of the Salton Sea. Exit at the Salton Sea Sate Recreation Area, and you will be directed to the registration area for the cleanup. Cleanup time 9 to noon. For further information contact Ingrid Vigeant at 619-231-7456 alcazar_11@cox.net.
The Coastal Commission and its many partners around the state will be launching a number of initiatives during the summer to highlight the 25th Anniversary and to encourage even more volunteers to turn out. One of these initiatives is a continued push into inland California in an attempt to launch cleanup activities in all 58 of California’s counties (we currently have cleanups in 44 counties). Several areas have already responded to this call, including a new effort by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy to complement Coastal Cleanup Day with a “Great Sierra Cleanup” that will encompass all of the Sierra Nevada counties.
“We want Coastal Cleanup Day to be an opportunity for every Californian to feel their connection to our coast, no matter where they may live,” said Eben Schwartz, Outreach Manager for the California Coastal Commission. “By pushing the Cleanup into every corner of the state, we can clean up a lot of trash before it has a chance to reach our ocean, and in doing so, bind every Californian to one another through our collective stewardship.”
Returning Presenting Sponsor Whole Foods market will also be undertaking efforts to promote the silver anniversary of the Cleanup. In addition to publicizing the effort in all of their northern California stores throughout the summer, Whole Foods Market is teaming up with new Coastal Cleanup Day sponsor Sunset Magazine to host a Celebration for the Coast in honor of the 25th Anniversary. The Celebration, which will take place at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, will provide an opportunity to reflect on the success the Cleanup has enjoyed over the past 25 years, to honor a selection of Coastal Heroes who will be featured in Sunset Magazine’s September issue, and to look ahead and prepare for the next 25 years of Cleanups.
Many of the local non-profit organizations and government agencies who form the regional coordinators of the Cleanup will also be undertaking initiatives to build on the past success of the Cleanup. San Francisco’s “Bring Your Own Bag” campaign, a partnership between Golden Gate Parks Conservancy, Literacy for Environmental Justice, and Sunset Scavenger designed to reduce plastic bag use during the 2008 Cleanup, proved so successful at reducing the number of bags thrown away at Ocean Beach during the Cleanup that it will be expanded to all locations in the city for the 2009 cleanup. In Los Angeles, local partner Heal the Bay plans to launch a new initiative to identify the “trash hot spots” of Santa Monica Bay, and focus its efforts on those locations hardest hit by marine debris.
With these and other innovations in store, the 2009 cleanup will undoubtedly build on the success of past years’ events. In 2008, 73,461 volunteers turned out to Coastal Cleanup Day, a 20 percent jump over 2007 and a 46 percent jump in volunteers over the past two years. Last year’s volunteers removed a record 1.6 million pounds of debris, of which almost 200,000 pounds was recycled, both record numbers for the Cleanup Program. For more information on last year’s event or any of the new initiatives planned for 2009, visit the website at www.coast4u.org.