Loving Lemon Grove and Enhancing Encanto

This year, I Love A Clean San Diego was selected as a recipient of the 2017 Keep America Beautiful/Lowe’s Community Partners Grant Program which has provided funds to conserve, protect, and enhance areas in Lemon Grove and Encanto.

The 2017 Keep America Beautiful/Lowe’s Community Partners Grant Program engages local volunteers to take action to benefit their community with projects that focus on critical needs. I Love A Clean San Diego’s grant program has already impacted both Lemon Grove and Encanto by supporting beautification and cleanup events in those communities. One final day of action for Lemon Grove is still to come on November 4th.

Lemon Grove Park volunteers had a blast while giving back in their community!

As a result of this grant program, on September 16th, we were able to expand two of our smaller Coastal Cleanup Day sites into large scale cleanups with additional projects to improve the parks! On this day, we had focused beautification efforts on Encanto Park and Lemon Grove Park. Between the two sites, over 130 volunteers removed 129 pounds of trash and 57 pounds of recycling from the areas. On top of the debris removed, volunteers accomplished impressive feats by removing brush, weeding landscape, planting 90 native plants, spread mulch, painting 9 structures, and removing graffiti.

Even with all the fun, those volunteers completed many beautification projects around the park!

On October 21st, we hosted the third event in Lemon Grove’s Civic Center Park. With a turnout of over 120 individuals, volunteers joined forces to remove litter – collecting 128 pounds of trash and 28 pounds of recycling, as well as some household hazardous waste like batteries and syringes. In addition to the cleanup, volunteers collected an unprecedented amount of cigarette litter from landscaped areas, spread new mulch over approximately 200 square feet of landscape, planted 95 various plants in that space, and painted the exterior of a nearby public restroom.  Overall, volunteers made efforts to drastically improve the area surrounding the Lemon Grove Depot station, a landmark of Lemon Grove, and removed over 150 pounds of debris from entering the storm water system and flowing to the Pacific Ocean!

Volunteers completed painting and planting projects at Lemon Grove Park on October 21st!

The work isn’t done just yet! We’ll be in Lemon Grove once again for a final event as a part of this grant program. On Saturday, November 4th, we are slated to complete another cleanup featuring even more beautification projects for Lemon Grove’s Berry Street Park. Volunteers can still register for this event and become a channel for change in their community. So roll up your sleeves, and let’s get to work!

San Diego Schools Step Up Their Recycling

At I Love A Clean San Diego, we work to lead and inspire our community to actively conserve and enhance the environment so that our children can enjoy this beautiful region for future generations to come. That’s why we believe in engaging with local schools to instill in them environmental values and habits at an early age.

Did you know that the average elementary school student drinks 133 servings of milk or juice per year? For the average elementary school, that means students consume approximately 75,000 carton beverages per year – that means more than 6 billion cartons are consumed in schools every year!

With carton recycling now available in over 60% of the country, including San Diego, we want to spread the word that you can recycle your cartons and help everyone improve their recycling habits.

Congratulations to Teirrasanta and Cherokee Point Elementary schools for leading by example. Take a look at the great work they’ve already done:

Tierrasanta Elementary won the San Diego Unified School District’s Most-Improved Recycling Award for 2016-17 by boosting their recycling diversion from 10% to 25% (by weight) over the course of just one school year. Through increased classroom recycling efforts as well as lunchtime recycling of cartons, lunch trays, and other recyclables, Tierrasanta students were able to reduce trash service, dramatically improve recycling rates, and save the school money.

Tierrasanta students use a helpful recycling station set up to stay mindful of what goes where when lunchtime ends!

Diverting 95% of all lunchtime waste is an extraordinary feat, and that’s exactly what Cherokee Point Elementary of San Diego Unified School District accomplished last school year. Students and staff joined together to ensure liquids, cartons, lunch trays, and food scraps were kept out of the trash and out of our landfills. The school’s Green Team students encouraged other students to properly sort their waste and take on litter pickup to keep campus clean.

Cherokee Point Elementary’s Green Team helped students sort their garbage leading to a 95% diversion of lunchtime waste!

School recycling programs not only encourage children to learn about the importance of recycling, but they also enable communities to recover large quantities of valuable materials, like beverage cartons. To start or enhance carton recycling efforts at your or your child’s school in San Diego, visit cartonopportunities.org. Our partner, Carton Council, has created materials specifically to help parents, teachers, and administrators get started.

Demonstration Garden Highlights Four Key Principles of Sustainable Landscaping

The San Diego County Water Authority unveiled a renovated demonstration garden at its Kearny Mesa headquarters designed to inspire more residents to create outdoor spaces that achieve multiple environmental benefits.

The four key principles of the Sustainable Landscapes Program.

The approximately 3,000-square-foot garden provides a tangible example of the recommendations of the San Diego Sustainable Landscapes Program, or SLP, and highlights four key principles of sustainable landscaping.

Here’s what to look for when visiting the garden:

  • Healthy, Living Soils: Healthy, living soils rich in organic content feed a complex soil food web. The soil holds water like a sponge and has nutrients for better plant health. Healthy soil may also play an important role in carbon sequestration. The garden has a 1.3 in layer of compost mixed into the soil and is topped with 3 inches of mulch to suppress weeds and reduce evaporation.
  • Climate-Appropriate Plants: A large selection of beautiful groundcovers, shrubs and trees is compatible with San Diego’s mild Mediterranean climate. These plants use less water and exhibit diverse colors, textures and shapes, while providing endless design opportunities. The garden uses more than 20 varieties of very low to moderate water-use plants, placed in hydrozones where plants with similar irrigation needs are grouped together.
  • High-Efficiency Irrigation: A smart irrigation controller adjusts water automatically in response to site and changing weather conditions. High-performance distribution components regulate pressure and are tailored to fit the exact watering needs of different plants in the landscape. The garden has inline drip irrigation and rotating nozzles to maximize water-use efficiency.
  • Rainwater as a Resource: Sustainable landscapes make the most of rainfall onsite. By slowing its flow, water is captured from rooftops and other hard surfaces so it can sink into the soil or be stored for later use. The garden demonstrates rainwater harvesting through a bioswale and detention basin next to the building and rain barrels along the entryway.
Visitors can check out the exhibit sign to learn all about key sustainable landscaping principles.

The garden also features an exhibit-quality sign to introduce visitors to key sustainable landscaping principles. The sign includes a QR Code that enables visitors to use their smartphones to quickly locate related SLP resources at sustainablelandscapessd.org.

Smaller signs throughout the landscape identify specific plant types. Free brochures on sustainable landscaping featuring the landscape’s design plan and plant palette are also available for visitors to take home.

Mexican Bush Sage at the Demonstration Garden.

To learn more about water conservation incentives, programs, resources and more, go to watersmartsd.org or follow SDCWA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.