What’s What at the 2014 Creek to Bay Cleanup

Amy Millard-105_croppedToday’s post comes from I Love A Clean San Diego’s Director of Development & Marketing, Morgan Justice-Black, who will be attending her 8th Creek to Bay Cleanup on April 26, 2014! 

 

I remember my first Creek to Bay Cleanup, it was April 28th, 2007. We hosted our kick off site at Belmont Park in Mission Beach, and it was freezing! But, we still managed to bring out more than 200 volunteers at that site, and just over 3,000 volunteers countywide.

Coldest Creek to Bay Cleanup in memory!
Coldest Creek to Bay Cleanup in memory!

Fast forward to today and we are recruiting an impressive 6,000 volunteers each year, double that of just 7 years prior. A lot has changed about Creek to Bay over the year’s, but the constant has been the heart of San Diego residents who come out to lend a hand, despite rain or record high temperatures!

 

In just a few short weeks, I Love A Clean San Diego will be hosting its 12th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup. Here’s a cheat sheet of what you’re in store for you if you volunteer on April 26th at Creek to Bay. A few things that we have planned for this year’s cleanup include:

 

1. Currently there are 95 cleanup sites available for volunteers to participate in. This is more than ever before! Cleanup sites stretch from Oceanside to Imperial Beach and all the way out to Alpine! We’ve also got a number of incredible site captains who are leading these cleanup sites. Learn more about some of them as we feature them in upcoming blog posts. See them all online at www.CreektoBay.org

 

2. We are offering Scout patches for Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops who volunteer. Have you seen this year’s patch design? Here it is! Once the cleanup concludes, participants can go back onto our website, www.CreektoBay.org and request their patches.

c2b14_patch

 

3. The Bring Your Own Reusables campaign is back in full force, meaning that we want all of our volunteers to bring a few things to help reduce our waste at the cleanup. Please remember to bring: a plastic bucket or other container to collect trash in, work gloves or gardening gloves, and a canteen for refilling with water at the event. You may have heard that our Bring Your Own Reusables campaign, which we fondly refer to as “BYO”, received national recognition by Keep America Beautiful this winter. In case you need a visual reminder, here is what to bring:

Bring Your Own
Bring Your Own bucket, work gloves and reusable water bottle to Creek to Bay!
Here we are, accepting the Innovation Award from Keep America Beautiful!
Here we are, accepting the Innovation Award from Keep America Beautiful!

 

4. Our generous friends at Sony Electronics are once again sponsoring our Creek to Bay Photo Contest! This year’s theme…Be The Change! We are asking folks to snap a photo of themselves or their volunteer group changing our environment for the better at Creek to Bay. More information about the contest and submission guidelines are on our Creek to Bay contest page.

Here's last year's photo contest winner, Evan!
Here’s last year’s photo contest winner, Evan!

 

5. Just a month after our Creek to Bay Cleanup, volunteers will have the opportunity to get together and share stories about the weirdest items they found at our 60th Anniversary Celebration Event. Join us on May 29th from 6:30 – 9pm at SeaWorld for what is bound to be a great time! More information is on our website too!

ILACSD_60_SavetheDate

 

Can’t wait to see all of you out there on April 26th for another fabulous Creek to Bay Cleanup. And here’s to hoping that this year’s weather is a little warmer than 2007, but not as warm as 2008!

Creek to Bay Photo Contest – Time to Vote!

On your mark….get set….VOTE!

For the second year in a row, I Love A Clean San Diego has teamed up with Sony Electronics to host a Creek to Bay photo contest. We asked volunteers at this year’s cleanup to best capture the “spirit of service” and send a photo to be entered into our contest. We received a ton of wonderful photos, so it was hard to narrow it down, but we did! We are so lucky to have such hardworking and enthusiastic volunteers!  Our top 5 entries have been posted on our Facebook page and it’s up to you to decide who the winner is! All you need to do is ‘Like’ our page and vote for your favorite photo by liking it, it’s as simple as that! Voting is open until Thursday, May 9th and the winner will be announced Friday, May 10th.  This year’s winner will be receiving a new Sony Cyber-shot camera!

Take a look at our Top 5 photos from this year’s contest (in no particular order):

The Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve sure looks a lot cleaner thanks to the help of this young lady!
Working hard or hardly working? These guys show how fun volunteering can be; you never know what you’ll find!
This Girl Scout Troop had a very successful time cleaning up La Jolla Shores! Check out all of that trash! Impressive job!
This 12 year old Boy Scout is saving marine wildlife one piece of trash at a time! Way to go!
These volunteers show what team work looks like at the Chollas Earthlab site!