Over the last few months, I Love A Clean San Diego has welcomed two new Board members to our ranks.
This spring, Eric Johnson joined the Board, bringing with him some serious knowledge as the head of corporate sustainability for Sony Electronics. You may have seen him leading Sony volunteer teams at this year’s Creek to Bay Cleanup and Kids’ Ocean Day. He’s already made an impact on the organization by recruiting some of his colleagues to donate their time to create an interactive recycling game that can be played on our new Sony touchscreen computer. Stay tuned for information about the launch of this new game in the next few months!
The newest addition to ILACSD’s Board of Directors is Clint Carney, a public relations guru who has been acting as a volunteer site captain for Creek to Bay and Coastal Cleanup Day at his local beach, Windansea, for the past few years. We first met Clint in 2009 when we worked together to coordinate a “supermarket sweep” type of event to celebrate America Recycles Day at a local Walmart. Clint brings a wealth of experience in media relations, government relations, community outreach, and public policy to ILACSD. Aside from his volunteer commitments, he currently manages corporate communications, public affairs and business development duties for a San Diego telemedicine company.
These two join seven other enthusiastic board members who continue to be strong ambassadors for a clean San Diego. Learn more about Eric, Clint, and all of our other board members here.
Today’s post is from ILACSD’s Development and Marketing Coordinator, Jessica Green.
It’s hard to believe that 2012 is more than halfway over! In just the first 6 months of the year, the I Love A Clean San Diego team has already scoured the county, educating and cleaning up with one goal in mind: protecting our local environment.
Alex, ILACSD Educator, and students from James Duke Elementary in Ramona on a Nearby Nature field trip.
The ILACSD staff has been working hard to educate San Diegans all over the county about the importance of protecting our local environment. From Pacific Beach Elementary School where students learned about ocean conservation, to four schools in Lemon Grove who participated in our hands-on watershed education presentations, our Educators have given over 240 presentations to almost 21,000 San Diego residents already in 2011! How do we know it’s working?73% of the high school students who received our education presentations showed an increase in knowledge afterwards. That means the next generation knows what to do to keep San Diego clean long into the future and more importantly, they want to do it.
Volunteers show off their haul at a cleanup event.
Our Educators aren’t the only ones taking environmental awareness on the road, our Community Events team continued to reach new communities through our signature event, the Creek to Bay Cleanup, and engage volunteers each month at smaller local cleanups in both inland and coastal areas. The result? 178,000 pounds of trash and debris that was sitting in local creeks, canyons, parks and on the beach, is now out of our environment. Which means our water is cleaner, and the areas you love to play in are safer for you, your family and all the amazing creatures that also call San Diego home.
It doesn’t matter if you live in Santee or Ocean Beach, Oceanside or Chula Vista, we are all connected by the environment and can all do things in our everyday lives to help protect the San Diego way of life we know and love. Whether you volunteer or donate (or both!), you’re helping us do great things to keep all of San Diego clean.
Check out our 2011 Annual Report to learn more about how our programs are reaching into communities across San Diego County.
Today’s post comes from our summer Community Events Intern, Gabe Grinstein. Gabe has been an amazingly dedicated and vital part of our team over the past few months. From helping at cleanup events to inventing new educational displays for our volunteers, Gabe has been resourceful and has always shown a positive attitude, regardless of the task. Everyone here at ILACSD would like to thank Gabe and we wish him the best of luck in school and during his upcoming research project!
Gabe helping tally trash collected at the Morning After Mess cleanup
I am finishing up my internship this week with I Love A Clean San Diego. I wish I could stay longer, but I am going to Wyoming to complete a field research requirement for my undergraduate concentration. My time here has flown by, keeping busy reaching deadlines to make sure we are ready for cleanups and other tasks such as inventing educational displays for site captains to make during Coastal Cleanup Day in September. I have had such a blast, thanks to the always-cheerful and welcoming attitude of the staff here. Every staff member has been fantastic, but I would like to give a special thank you to Jemma De Leon. As my supervisor, I worked with Jemma on a daily basis and she made my work here so much easier, whether it was calling a client when they wouldn’t take my previously agreed upon posters or helping me clean the storage room.
Gabe displaying the educational displays he created
I learned so much from this internship that I will surely take for my future in the environmental field. So many things go unnoticed in planning a cleanup or in any environmental initiative, but every step is important in making it successful. I am planning on conducting a research after I graduate which shows the effects of sports on the environment and ways to make it more sustainable. Even an area as beautiful as San Diego needs improvement, making it hard to imagine how much needs to be done in other cities across the United States and abroad. If everyone could portray just a small amount of the passion I saw working with the staff here and volunteers at events, it would surely turn around our environmental problems.
Although I won’t be able to participate in any ILACSD events anymore, I will still help the environment somewhere else. I hope all of you continue with it as well.
Today’s post comes from our Director of Development and Marketing, Morgan Justice-Black! Morgan, along with our Executive Director Pauline Martinson, recently graduated from LEAD San Diego‘s Impact San Diego program. All of us at ILACSD are extremely proud of their accomplishments and excited for them to be recognized as great leaders even outside of our office.
Just over a year ago, I was invited to join San Diego Gas & Electric’s staff at the LEAD Visionary Awards. Although I had heard of LEAD, I wasn’t expecting much from the event, aside from a free dinner and an opportunity to connect with some of our partners at SDG&E. What I thought was going to be just another dinner ended up setting me up for an exciting year-long journey in leadership.
Representing my hometown San Diego Chargers as they were “Super Bowl Bound”
Through LEAD San Diego’s 10 month Impact San Diego program, I learned that I’ve got a lot to learn when it comes to San Diego. I consider myself to be a fairly educated person, my radio is permanently affixed on NPR, I spend almost as much time on VoiceofSanDiego.org as I do on Facebook (hey, I do marketing…I have to be on Facebook!). But, LEAD’s Impact program made me realize that I’m not as connected with local issues as I should be. There is really no excuse for this, considering that I grew up in San Diego and have spent the majority of my adult life here!
Throughout the program, I was also able to get a behind the scenes perspective on so many things that us locals take for granted.
On the deck of a navy ship at 32nd Street Naval Base during LEAD’s session on the Military
Did you know that…
10% of all cars sold in the U.S. come through the National City port terminal?
Military doctors use the same high tech “cut suits” as Grey’s Anatomy to simulate emergency surgery before deploying from the Balboa Naval Hospital?
California has the highest crime recidivism rate in the entire US at over 70%?
26% of all jobs in San Diego are related to the Military?
Besides learning about the many trades in San Diego, our economy, our education, military and high tech sectors, the program taught me a lot about leadership. It taught me that “STJ’s” are the most prevalent Myers Brigg types among managers and leaders. In case you were curious, from my assessment I was categorized as an ESTJ (that stands for extroverted thinking with senses). It also taught me that not everyone can be a leader, especially in a program full of them! Sometimes, you just have to be humble, step aside, and let someone else take charge.
Just after graduation, the LEAD Impact Class of 2012
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Community Events Intern, Gabe Grinstein.
Volunteers up bright and early to cleanup up the Morning After Mess!
Already this morning, 227 volunteers came out and joined I Love A Clean San Diego by Belmont Park in Mission Beach for the Morning After Mess cleanup. After having the day off yesterday to celebrate Independence Day, there was no better way to start off the day than with a beach cleanup to recover all the mess from yesterday’s festivities. It was an early start for me, getting up at 7 so I could get to Belmont Park by 8 to start setting up. To be honest, I started quite slow since I was very tired, but I woke up once people started to come by and sign up. The mood was great around the volunteers as there were many eager people ready to participate, and we had 94/9 radio right next to us playing music and advertising our organization and event on the radio.
Volunteers combed the beaches picking up cigarette butts, plastic bags, bottles, and more.
Time always flies by during events since it becomes so busy. I didn’t clean up any trash, but I weighed the trash and recycling bags, and added tally-marks to the big board to show how many cigarette butts, plastic bags, styrofoam pieces, and other items that we collected. By the end, we had marked 8,260 cigarette butts! This is an astonishing number since one cigarette butt can contaminate up to one gallon of water, so thankfully we picked them up before they reached the water.
Gabe keeping track of trash as it came in.
Volunteers also picked up 80 plastic bags, 134 styrofoam pieces, 345 pounds of trash, and 130 pounds of recyclables. People began to leave after a couple of hours and we started wrapping up around 11:30. The end is always my favorite part of the cleanups because I get to see all of the smiles of people when they turn their bags in. I can always see a sense of accomplishment on the faces of the volunteers. It is a great feeling knowing that we bettered the environment we live in, even if it wasn’t our mess.
I Love A Clean San Diego and other local nonprofits are at it again, hoping to make this summer the cleanest on record at some of our most popular beach destinations. As hundreds of thousands of people look to descend on local beaches this summer, I Love A Clean San Diego, FreePB,org, and Surfrider Foundation are working hard to make sure the beaches don’t bear the brunt of what thousands of people leave behind…trash! As part of the Clean Beach Coalition, our organizations work together to remind our community to be aware of the amount of trash they make, and also place temporary trash and recycling bins at the most popular beaches during popular holidays like the 4th of July.
Even with the added trash and recycling bins, inevitably some trash still ends up on the sand. If you’re sick of your favorite beach getting trashed, you can do something about it by volunteering at the Morning After Mess, scheduled for Thursday, July 5th at 9am! ILACSD will be hosting our cleanup site at Belmont Park in Mission Beach. Contact Jemma De Leon at jdeleon@cleansd.org or 619-704-2778 if you are interest in participating or have any event questions.
Our thanks go out to the sponsors who helped make this year’s campaign a reality!
Think Blue – City of San Diego Stormwater & Transporation Department
Pacific Beach Shore Club
Lahaina’s
Keep California Beautiful
Car2go
Vavi
ClifBar
BarWest
Paradise Point Resort & Spa.
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Director of Development and Marketing, Morgan Justice-Black!
A few years ago, I Love A Clean San Diego heard about a program being launched by our national affiliate, Keep America Beautiful. The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, although in its infancy, seemed like a great addition to our program arsenal. Anyone who has participated in one of our cleanups knows that cigarette butts are far and away the most common item picked up. It’s a painstaking process, bending over and picking them up one by one. While removing cigarette litter is good, preventing it is even better. So that’s what we set out to do.
In collaboration with the San Diego Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, we are implementing three new CLPP programs this summer. The areas targeted for ash can installation include: Oceanside, North Park, and La Mesa. Prior to placing the ash cans, our volunteers do litter scans to find the areas that have the most cigarette litter. Then, ash cans are installed, and the cigarette litter collection begins. Typically, after about a month, volunteers will do a post installation litter scan to see how many butts still make it onto the ground. One lucky volunteer has the dubious task of counting each cigarette butt in all the ash cans to see how many are collected during the first few months. In some cases, we’ve been able to collect upwards of 2,500 butts in a single month!
We are excited to expand this already successful program. The three new areas we are reaching join Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla and Point Loma where ash cans were installed in previous years. We estimate these ashcans have prevented over 30,000 cigarette butts from littering our local environment each year.
Kevin, winner of our Creek to Bay Volunteers in Action Photo Contest, shows just a handful of the butts picked up at one cleanup location.
Today’s post comes from ILACSD’s Outreach Intern, Ian!
Our Best Tijuana River Valley Cleanup Yet!
Hello, my name is Ian MacGregor and I am ILACSD’s newest Outreach Intern, I am a 16 year old high school student. I became an intern here at ILACSD because I wanted to assist in the effort to beautify our county. I’ve loved my time so far here and hope to continue interning for a long time.
This past Saturday more than 150 volunteers worked very hard to beautify the southernmost part of our county, the Tijuana River Valley. Just south of a sod farm and just north of the border, the volunteers worked very hard collecting trash and recyclables. They collected about 2000 pounds of trash, a whole dumpster full of bottles and other plastics and somewhere around 130 tires.
In previous years, we have had around 75 volunteers. Having double that amount was a great sign that our efforts to spread the word about the cleanups are working. Participants ranged from middle schoolers working to improve their community to 15 Job Corps participants searching for some community service to put on their résumé. From a clique of friends just looking for a great activity on a Saturday morning to a long time participant happy to see the growth of the cleanup.
You never know what you’ll find at our cleanups!
There were three sponsor booths there: our I Love a Clean San Diego tent or the registration tent, a WiLDCOAST tent that educating participants about their organization, and an Ocean Minded tent that gave away free merchandise. There was even a major TV news station covering the event.
During the cleanup, we found everything from shoes to styrofoam, from a manikin head to cans stuck in cement.
In the end, we are happy to see the growth of the event and to see the great change in the landscape of the river. Below is a Picture of the Job Corps Members, our staff and our interns sitting on the pile of tires we collected. Thank you to all our volunteers and all our sponsors.
Today’s post comes to you from Barbara Lopez, ILACSD’s bi-lingual Program Assistant for our recycling database & hotline, WasteFreeSD.org!
Summer is finally here and although we are able to enjoy the sun year-round here in San Diego, summer brings more backyard BBQs, pool parties, and visits to the beach. While enjoying the summer, you might come across some items that you no longer need. Before sending it to the landfill, use our summer recycling guide to see if there are any other disposal options available.
Have a surfboard that you no longer ride? Before you put it in your trash can, consider recycling your old surfboard to an organization like Rerip. Rerip has set up a few locations in San Diego where you can drop off surfboards in any condition to be recycled. Collected surfboards are then separated into three different piles:
Ones that are in decent shape are repaired for minor damages and are then given to nonprofits or people in need.
Ones that have seen the last of their surfing days are given to local artists and organizations that use surfboards for various art projects.
Surfboards that are difficult to reuse are saved for Research and Development in use as filler for concrete.
To find a location to drop off an old surfboard, visit rerip.com.
As you are digging through your closet looking for your beach gear, you may find that you have old flip flops that you no longer wear. Luckily, you can send in your old flip flops for recycling through FeelGoodz’s Recycle Your UnFlop Campaign. FeelGoodz will store your unwanted flip flops until they collect enough to ship to UniquEco, a company that will distribute the flip flops to Kenyan villagers who will make new items out of the flip flops. Visit the Recycle Your UnFlop page for more details.
Many of us already know that aluminum cans and plastic bottles are easily recyclable by simply placing them into our curbside recycling bins. But there are other items from your summer BBQ that can also be recycled.
Plastic cups, as well as other plastic food containers, are now accepted in curbside recycling programs in San Diego.
Wine bottles are also recyclable but did you know that natural cork can be recycled? Thanks to companies like Recork and Cork Reharvest, residents can easily recycle corks at participating BevMo! and Whole Foods locations.
Have other items that need recycling? Our one stop recycling resource,WasteFreeSD.org, can help you find a location to recycle or properly dispose of common household items. Try it today!
Today’s post comes from Alex Mullen-Ley who has been ILACSD’s Environmental Educator for the past year. Alex grew up in San Diego and graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a degree in Environmental Studies, focusing her education on fresh water management and political ecology. Alex has been an amazing asset to the ILACSD team and we will all miss her as she moves on to continue her environmental education!
If you had told me five years ago that I would end up teaching K-12 students I would have never believed you. I didn’t think I had the patience or the temperament required to be an educator. And yet for the past year I have been standing in front of thousands of elementary school students, high school students, and even adults, teaching them about the causes of water pollution and how individuals can take action to protect the environment and care for their communities.
My time as the Environmental Educator at I Love A Clean San Diego has been an incredible learning experience. It is not easy to inspire 30+ young people, each with a unique background and different strengths and weaknesses, to listen and learn. Looking back on the past year I think it’s pretty unbelievable that only myself, the Education Coordinator, Samantha, and the two part time educators (four people!) spoke with over 30,000 students countywide.
One of the greatest challenges of being an environmental educator is redirecting the conversation away from the “gloom and doom” of the environmental problems and focusing instead on a more positive message. Some students would groan audibly when they discovered that I would be talking about water pollution prevention, “Aww man, this is going to be boring!” But when I learned to focus my lectures on suggesting simple but tangible things that they could do to help solve the problems, the students were suddenly much more engaged and excited.
Over 1000 students & volunteers brought Alex’s design to life!
My favorite event while at ILACSD was Kids’ Ocean Day. I participated in last year’s event as part of the support staff but this year I was responsible for designing the aerial art and giving assemblies to the participating schools. The assembly was one of my favorite presentations because it was all about empowering students to protect the ocean and getting them excited about the beach cleanup and aerial art. The success of this year’s event is a testament to how well the staff works together. I’m not being egotistical when I say that the event was picture perfect.
Though much of my time was spent visiting schools around San Diego County, I did have the opportunity to work closely with the other staff members at ILCASD. I helped out with cleanups and development events, and worked the booth at countless community events. Because ILACSD’s events always run so smoothly, it isn’t obvious how much effort and coordination go into organizing them. The staff members at ILACSD are very good at what they do, whether that is educating the youth, coordinating events, or managing a fast-growing organization.
I have a good reason for leaving my position at ILACSD- I am going to begin graduate school at Scripps Institution of Oceanography where I will pursue my interests in ecosystem-based marine management. But I am grateful for all of the experiences that I have had as the Environmental Educator and I will miss being part of such an inspired, dedicated, and successful nonprofit. I wish only the very best for everyone at ILACSD and I will continue to attend cleanups and volunteer for other events. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
