The Annual Day Without a Bag has come and gone, and the big question is…did you remember to ban single use bags on December 16th? Well, hopefully you did along with thousands of other San Diegans. I Love A Clean San Diego wants to give you a little recap of the impressive successes of the first ever regional Day Without a Bag campaign in San Diego County.
Drumroll please…
Day Without a Bag was a huge success! You might have heard about it on TV, the web, or radio. It was just about everywhere! We even received a proclamation from the County of San Diego recognizing our efforts to encourage San Diegans to live a little bit greener.
A handful of environmental nonprofits in the region teamed up to coordinate a massive reusable bag giveaway stretching from Imperial Beach to Oceanside and Ocean Beach to El Cajon. Together, approximately 230 volunteers from I Love A Clean San Diego, San Diego Coastkeeper, Surfrider Foundation, and the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation gave away more than 30,000 reusable bags on December 16th outside grocery stores and other retail locations. We had lots of help from almost all jurisdictions in San Diego County, namely the cities of Oceanside, Encinitas, Lemon Grove, and Chula Vista. Our friends at Westfield UTC loaned us the use of their mall for our press conference, and even a few bag monsters joined in the fun.
We’re all feeling pretty good that thanks to our efforts, 30,000+ San Diegans have at least one reusable bag to use in place of single use plastic or paper ones. And when you consider that the average San Diegan uses more than 500 plastic bags each year, our efforts could lead to 15 million less bags in our waste stream in the coming year. Hoorray for that! And thanks to all of our volunteers and sponsors who made it all happen.
Save the Date for next years Day Without A Bag event, Thursday December 15th, but remember to live every day without a disposable bag!
