Come show off your sustainability smarts! Grab your friends, your partner, or come solo and join us on Thursday, June 4, at 6 p.m. at Wonderland Ocean Pub for EcoKnowledge: Environmental Trivia Night.
Put your skills to the test with trivia questions on topics including:
Proper recycling, organics recycling, and waste sorting
Pollution facts
Zero waste living dos and don’ts
Environmental issues in San Diego and beyond
The top 3 scoring teams will receive prizes including gift cards, zero waste home essentials, and more!
Free registration required. Food and drink (non-alcoholic options included) available for purchase at the venue. Thank you to the City of San Diego for sponsoring this event and to Wonderland for hosting us!
Today’s blog comes from our Community Program Coordinator, Moriah Saldaña. If you’ve been wanting to join us for one of cleanups but haven’t had the opportunity, October is your month. Read on to learn more about what makes our fall cleanup line up so important and how you can be a part of it!
After four years of severe drought, the coming of El Niño is welcome news! Scientists are predicting even greater storms during this rainy season than in 1997. It is important to ensure that we are prepared, whether that means clearing your rain gutters, taking advantage of the City of San Diego’s rain barrel rebate program, or clearing our natural spaces of litter and debris. Yes, that’s right, it is crucial to remove as much trash as possible now to prevent flooding caused by waterways blocked with trash and overgrown vegetation. On top of the possibility of flooding, whatever trash remains in local creeks and canyons will flow directly to the Pacific Ocean, causing coastal pollution and beach closures.
San Diego has 11 watersheds made up of canyons and waterways which empty into the Pacific Ocean. (Tijuana River Valley pictured)
Interested in helping? We have two upcoming cleanup opportunities that need your support, just in time for the rainy season!
Come out to the Tijuana River Valley on Saturday, October 3rd from 9am-noon to help I Love A Clean San Diego pull trash, tires, and other debris from the Dairy Mart Road Bridge area before it makes it way out to the Pacific. This event is a part of Tijuana River Action Month, which is a series of events held during September and October to bring people together in an effort to improve the Tijuana River Valley. With around 40 volunteers at our June Tijuana River Valley Cleanup, we cleaned up over 4,000 pounds of trash. Think of how much more we could pick up with double the volunteers! To register, click here.
The bucket says it all. Come out, roll up your sleeves, and get your hands dirty for a clean & beautiful San Diego!
Clearing trash out of the Tijuana River Valley is especially important before this rainy season, since our beaches in the South Bay are consistently some of the most polluted beaches. Even today, the Beach Advisory is warning people not to go to any beach south of Coronado because of possible pollution.
Volunteer at the Tijuana River Valley Cleanup to claim your very own ILACSD water bottle!
And a thank you, everyone who volunteers this Saturday at the Tijuana River Cleanup will receive a complimentary reusable water bottle! Click here to register today.
Beautify Chula Vista Day is great for the whole family!
The following weekend on October 10th, we are partnering with the City of Chula Vista for the 13th Annual Beautify Chula Vista Day! This year for Beautify Chula Vista Day we will have two sites, one at Discovery Park and another at the Otay Recreation Center. Volunteers will pick up trash, remove graffiti and do other beautification projects to make Chula Vista shine.
This event has made an extensive impact on the City of Chula Vista as a whole. Since the first Beautify Chula Vista Day,
thousands of dedicated residents have painted out 7,750 square feet of graffiti, stenciled 200 storm drains to warn against dumping, planted 117 trees, and removed nearly 40,000 pounds of debris littering neighborhoods in Chula Vista, showing that huge results can come from volunteers that donate just one morning a year toward helping their community.
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.
