If you are reading this message, then you have had a hand in helping I Love A Clean San Diego thrive in 2013. Whether through volunteering at a cleanup, approaching our table at a community event, or providing a financial donation, more than 100,000 San Diegans have made some sort of commitment to keeping San Diego clean this year! And for that, we are truly thankful.
As we look toward 2014…just a couple days away…we are all very excited to celebrate the 60th anniversary of an organization that has reinvented itself so many times to continue to stay current amidst all sorts of environmental challenges. Next week, we will recap all of our 2013 accomplishments, as well as give a sneak peak of some of our plans to celebrate the big 6-0!
In the meantime, all of us at I Love A Clean San Diego wish you and your families a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Happy New Year from the ILACSD team top row L-R: Erika Bjorkquist, Monica Rosquillas, Natalie Roberts middle row L-R: Ann Hirsch, Amanda Sweet, Pauline Martinson, Samantha Quinsey bottom row L-R: Barbara Lopez, Anna Fadem, Lexi Ambrogi, Brittany Fischer, Morgan Justice-Black
Today’s blog comes from our expert Recycling and Hotline Department. Have any questions? Give them a call at 1-877-R-1-EARTH!
Each holiday season, the County of San Diego and ILACSD work together to remind everyone that holiday recycling goes beyond just wrapping paper and gift boxes, your tree can be recycled too! This year, I Love A Clean San Diego is celebrating its 40th year of providing information on holiday tree recycling to San Diego residents! We have a long history in the Christmas tree recycling biz…
The War Against Litter Committee and The San Diego Ecology Center cosponsored the “Give Earth a Gift” tree recycling project in 1972. Then, our tree recycling hotline was staffed completely by volunteers. Today, our hotline and database are expanded to include recycling information all year round.
The purpose of the project was to expand public awareness and encourage active participation in reducing unnecessary waste of dead Christmas trees.
Drop off locations were placed at San Diego high schools; special awards were given to the three schools receiving the most trees, were given plaques engraved with the words “Good Earthkeeping Seal of Approval”
Starting in 1972, ILACSD has been your go-to tree recycling resource!
Throwing away your holiday tree and other foliage needlessly wastes a natural resource and decreases the capacity of local landfills. Trees and yard trimmings are easily recyclable into mulch and compost which are then used to improve soil health at residences, public parks, and local farms. According to the National Christmas Tree Association, 25-30 million holiday trees are sold each year in the United States.Most waste haulers offer special holiday tree recycling programs to pick up trees with yard waste on regular collection days.
In addition to curbside pick-up, tree drop-off sites are located in the communities of Bonsall, Carlsbad, Coronado, Del Mar, El Cajon, Escondido, Fallbrook, Imperial Beach, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, Ramona, San Marcos, Solana Beach, Valley Center, Vista and several communities in the City of San Diego. Here’s a complete list of Christmas tree recycling locations.
I Love A Clean San Diego operates San Diego County’s official recycling website and call center which refers thousands of residents to the proper facilities to recycle or dispose of just about anything. From broken surfboards to wine corks, railroad ties to cooking oil, WasteFreeSD makes recycling quick and convenient. San Diego County residents can go to: www.WasteFreeSD.org or call 1-877-R-1-EARTH to learn how to recycle their holiday trees as well as hundreds of other items. Before recycling your holiday tree, review this list of recycling tips to ensure that your tree is recycled properly:
Trees taller than four feet should be cut in half.
All tree stands, nails and tree decorations must be removed.
Check with your local hauler to see if they accept flocked trees (trees covered in faux snow or glitter), most do not.
Click to find out where to recycle your Christmas tree and more!
Today’s blog comes from our Education Coordinator, Erika Bjorkquist.
The morning started out fantastic. “What do you expect to see when we get in the canyon?” “Squirrels.” “Snakes.” “Majestic birds.” We split into 4 groups of 7 students and a leader and headed down. Half by way of Genessee, half descending behind the school. Four educators, 2 volunteers, 2 teachers, 52 students, one canyon.
Giving kids a chance to learn about and appreciate nature (even if it’s prickly)!
The first group I led down the steep slope into the canyon questioned the quick change in temperature and smell. One student connected the smell to a weekly vocabulary word, musty. Another hypothesizes that there is more shade in the canyon, resulting in colder temperatures. That and the sinking of cold air creates a drainage flow. Once in the canyon and layered up, we followed the creek and made discoveries. One student found tracks and after close examination, decided they belonged to raccoons. Others enjoyed identifying plants through comparison of their naturalist guide. Some looked in every oak tree for galls, like they were hidden treasure. They all liked touching sagebrush and fennel, even if they didn’t enjoy the smelly aftermath.
While some students liked plants the most and others enjoyed looking for animals, they all seemed to appreciate the opportunity to learn outdoors. Most of the students we brought to the Tecolote Canyon had never been there before, even though it is mere feet from their school. This is a fantastic program that opens kids eyes to the nature around them. I am so glad I was able to be a part of it.
Today’s post comes from our Education Coordinator, Erika Bjorkquist
One great thing about San Diego is the access to nature. Scattered throughout its urban areas are canyons, preserves, and open space, so no matter where you live, nature is at your fingertips. While the natural world is within our reach, many people are not aware of the benefits of spending time in nature or even its proximity to their communities. Through our Nearby Nature program, ILACSD hopes that students become more familiar with their surroundings and enjoy their local environment.
Literally reaching new heights in environmental education!Getting a closer look at the natural world
Research is showing that children need connections with nature as part of their healthy growth and development. Though nature is beneficial, children are spending less time outdoors. This disconnection can add to health problems like obesity or event result in a fear of the outdoors. ILACSD hopes to reconnect students in under-served schools to the natural environment. This two-step program first introduces students to what they can find in nature and the importance of protecting these natural places, and then leads students on an educational hike through a nearby natural area. By helping students experience the nature in their own neighborhood, this program allows them to better understand and value the nature surrounding them every day.
This program is a favorite of ILACSD staff, as shown through our education staff:
“My favorite thing about NN is spending time outside, enjoying and appreciating San Diego’s canyons with San Diego’s kids.” Monica Rosquillas, ILACSD Environment Educator
“I learn as much as the students we lead, they have a curiosity that is contagious!” Erika Bjorkquist, ILACSD Education Coordinator
If you are interested in learning more about our Nearby Nature Program, please contact Erika Bjorkquist at ebjorkquist@cleansd.org.
Students today, future environmentalists tomorrow!
We are excited to announce the addition of two Chula Vista canyons, Del Rey Canyon and Rice Canyon, that are now available through the Adopt-A-Beach Clean Canyons program! Join us as we work with the Chula Vista Charitable Foundation and the California Coastal Commission to protect our canyons—and ultimately our beaches—from the harmful effects of litter and pollution. Whether you’re an individual volunteer, part of a community group, or a business looking to make a different, you are welcome to register to adopt these canyons on the website at www.adoptsd.org.
Canyons are great places for humans and pets to enjoy nature! Here’s our Program Assistant Barbara’s dog, Wiley, on a walk in Rice Canyon.
Why should you add a canyon to your family? Here are our top 6 reasons:
1. Inland cleanups are crucial to preventing marine debris. 80% of trash that winds up in the ocean starts inland and travels through San Diego County’s 11 watersheds.
2.Be our 10,001st adopter! 10,000 volunteers a year are a part of our Adopt-A-Beach program, making it ILACSD’s most popular volunteer activity.
3. The harmful effects of debris are severe: these include negative economic and aesthetic impacts and harm and risk to human health and safety.
4. Free education presentation! as part of the program, ILACSD offers free education presentations to interested adopters as part of their first cleanup. These presentations are usually on-site at the cleanup
5.Protecting our local plants and animals: trash causesinjury and death to animals through entanglement and ingestion as well as habitat destruction. Species indigenous to these canyons, such as the San Pedro Martir coyote and the San Diego Sunflower, are threatened by polluted environments.
The San Pedro Martir coyote, local to Southern CaliforniaThe San Diego Sunflower: a native that blooms in sage scrub of these canyons.
6. Because YOU love a clean San Diego!
A bit commitment shy? If you would like to try out a canyon cleanup before deciding to adopt, you are welcome to attend ourlaunch cleanup at Del Rey Canyon on Saturday, December 14th from 9AM-12PM.
Our thanks to the Chula Vista Charitable Foundation for their financial support to expand the Clean Canyons program into Chula Vista. We look forward to increasing volunteer engagement in Chula Vista as a result of their generosity!
As Thanksgiving approaches, we wanted to take a moment and share all that we are thankful for here at I Love A Clean San Diego!
At ILACSD we’re thankful for…
…the opportunity to work in, protect, and preserve a community as beautiful and diverse as San Diego.
Keeping SD clean for 60 years!
…the teachers and schools who partner with us on our education programs, allowing us to reach almost 40,000 San Diego County students annually and teach them the importance of recycling and resource conservation and protection.
Student pledges for America Recycles Day 2013
…everyone we’re connected to online: thanks for staying involved and giving us feedback through our Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter accounts!
…our great team of staff, interns, and Board members who work hard everyday to conserve San Diego’s coastal and inland resources.
…the fact that 2014 will be our 60th year, making ILACSD the longest-running environmental non-profit in San Diego!
…the donors who help support our efforts. From $5 to $5,000, we’re thankful for every gift.
One day to educate and motivate. One day to get our neighbors, friends and colleagues excited about what can be accomplished when we all work together. One day to make recycling bigger and better 365 days a year!Help the County of San Diego and ILACSD celebrate America Recycles Day by joining us for an after-school cleanup in Alpine! We’ll be teaming up with students, parents and teachers from Boulder Oaks Elementary School to clean up the neighborhood. We would love your help in spreading the message about the importance of recycling year-round!
Why is this day so important? Let’s look at the numbers: the average American produces 4.4 pounds of trash a day, and on the whole the United States produces more than 250 million tons of trash a year. San Diegans produce more than the national average, at 5.4 pounds a day! However, only about 35 percent is currently recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Recycling provides many benefits including:
Conserving natural resources: Recycling conserves trees, water, and minerals – preserving the environment for future generations.
Reduction of the need for landfills: Recycling allows material to re-enter the marketplace as new products instead of taking up space in landfills.
Pollution prevention: Recycling avoids greenhouse gas emissions (caused by processing and extraction of raw materials) equivalent to removing more than 34 million cars from the road each year.
Energy savings: Recycling reduces the need to extract and process raw materials.
Job creation: Recycling helps create new jobs in the United States for both the recycling industry and manufacturing.
America Recycles Day happens once a year, and it serves as a great opportunity to recognize big things happening in recycling and waste reduction, as well as to motivate others to take action!
The 3 R’s – recycle, reduce, reuse – are inherently connected. To be a successful business, you must have all three.
Case in point: Take Sony Electronics. Their North America headquarters are here in San Diego, and they have been taking strides to reduce the strain that their facility and its hundreds of employees put on our local waste stream.
Sony employees volunteering for our Creek to Bay cleanup
How do they do this?
Food waste composting: Their campus includes a cafe where many employees enjoy all sorts of lunch options from a salad bar to sushi. Instead of throwing away the food waste, facilities teams now compost it.The bins are picked up weekly and taken to Miramar for composting. They are on track to divert 10 tons of waste annually, as a result of their composting program.
Single stream recycling: The easier you make things, the more participation you’ll get. Placing all types of recycling in one container isn’t the most innovative practice, but how about having centralized recycling containers on each floor that serve as visible reminders to recycle? Perhaps water cooler chat will relocate to to the recycling station.
Employee engagement: Engaging employees in environmental education and volunteer efforts surrounding conservation is another key way that Sony drives home the message that each of our actions has an effect on the local environment. By picking up litter at canyon cleanups or attending an education session at the office, environmental conservation is top of mind. This then transitions into employees’ ownership and support of in-house recycling programs and the adoption of sustainable behaviors. Furthermore employees are encouraged to join Sony’s Green Workspace Certification program. This program outlines simple yet effective every day actions that make a real difference in waste, water and energy reduction. Rewards and incentives are available for achievers in the program. All of these initiatives (and many more) are helping Sony along the path to their global “Road to Zero” long term environmental goal.
“Any waste is a waste of resources.” says Eric Johnson, Sustainability Manager at Sony. “By changing some of our internal processes and giving our employees some tools to reduce the waste they generate at work we are aiming to divert at least 15 tons of garbage from the Miramar landfill and increase our recycling rate by 10% over the next year.”
Whether your business has 50 employees or 500, there are always ways to lessen the impact your office has on the environment. Here are a few easy-to-implement suggestions:
-Purchase paper that has, minimum, 30 percent recycled content
-Change the settings on all employee computers so that printing defaults to double-sided copies
– Ensure that each employee has convenient recycling options for common office items like paper and cardboard
– Utilize natural light, when possible, to cut down on energy; keeping the blinds open and opting for low-walled cubicles will help to spread light throughout the office
November 16 is Storm Drain Stenciling Day! You can help to prevent storm drain pollution in the City of San Diego through storm drain stenciling, a great program we offer sponsored by Think Blue. By marking the drains with a pollution prevention message, you are educating the public that no oil, soap, or debris should go down the drains. We’ll have a big event on November 16th at Polaris Breen Park in Mira Mesa, but check out our website for how you can sign up any day. You may be wondering why we’re running around with stencils and buckets of paint, and what a storm drain even is. Read on for some quick facts and how you can get involved (you can also check out this brief video about the program)! So why is storm drain stenciling important?Urban storm-water runoff is considered the biggest contributor to coastal marine pollution. Both human forces (irrigation runoff and illegal dumping) and natural forces (wind and rain) move trash and other pollutants into our natural waterways, storm drains, and flood control channels. By stenciling the drains with the pollution prevention message, we remind people that oil, soap, gum, food wrappers, cigarette butts, and chip bags don’t belong in the storm drains.
Here’s how a storm drain works
Umm, what IS a storm drain? The storm drain system is designed to prevent flooding by carrying rainwater from city streets to the ocean. Yet, chemicals, trash, and oil that have been spilled between rains can also enter the storm drain system. From here they enter pipelines that are not connected to the sewer system, and the water from the storm drains eventually flows, untreated, into the ocean, causing large amounts of pollution.
A storm drain (that needs stenciling!)
Why should I participate? It takes the help of our volunteers to get these storm drains stenciled; without you, this project cannot succeed! The few minutes it takes to stencil a storm drain provides years of reminders to our neighbors that they must be careful about what goes into the drains. I Love A Clean San Diego encourages you to think green and “Think Blue!” This sounds great!! How do I sign up? You can check out our website for all the details. For more information about this program, or to schedule your own stenciling project, please email lambrogi@cleansd.org.
Today’s blog post comes from a great local non-profit, Kill the Cup. They encourage coffee drinkers to bring their own cups when they buy coffee by offering them prizes. People who upload photos of their reusable mugs to KillTheCup.com get entry into raffles for cash and prizes. Their promotions educate consumers to behave in ways that will save them money and reduce their carbon footprint! They also partner with businesses and universities to reduce their environmental impact and improve their bottom line.
Kill the Cup met I love a Clean San Diego at the Coastal Cleanup Day in September. We discovered that our purpose was very closely aligned with that of I Love a Clean San Diego. ILACSD creates environmental and educational programs to promote conservation and clean up the environment. Kill the Cup uses gamification, social media marketing, and behavioral economics to encourage consumers to reduce waste.
Kill the Cup is the flagship program of Social Ventures for Sustainability, a nonprofit that partners with campuses and communities to help them prevent environmentally harmful consumer behavior.
Kill the Cup started as an MBA capstone project of Drew Beal and Mike Taylor while they were studying at UCSD’s Rady School of Management. We decided to create an environmental program that would make it fun, easy, and convenient to reduce waste. Users who brought their own reusable mugs to coffee shops uploaded photos to KillTheCup.com to enter into daily, weekly, and grand prize raffles. We shared the photos on social media to reward and recognize users.
It worked! The percentage of coffees sold in reusable containers rose from 11% to over 20% in just eight weeks.Now, Social Ventures is running Kill the Cup campaigns at UC San Diego, Georgetown University, and Bird Rock Coffee Roasters.
Please check out our website and provide us with feedback! You’re welcome to upload a photo and share your environmentally responsible consumer behavior with us.
Want to check out Kill the Cup in action and win cool stuff? Check out their Bird Rock Coffee Roasters “Show Your Mug” event!
