Registration is full for this event. Please check out our events calendar to find another upcoming workshop!
Join ILACSD as we team up with the City of Vista to bring you a Zero Waste 101 Workshop focused on organics! On Saturday, August 25, 2018, we will be hosting the Save Your Scraps Workshop from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM at the Alta Vista Botanical Gardens located at 1270 Vale Terrace Drive, Vista, CA 92084. The workshop is complimentary and open to the public!
Come by and learn how to keep organics out of the landfill by shopping smart, storing food properly, and composting your scraps. We will also cover water conservation topics, such as ocean-friendly gardens and laundry-to-landscape systems. Visit educational booths, participate in one of the hands-on activities, and bring in gently used items you were planning to donate and participate in the Swap ‘n’ Shop! Swap ‘n’ Shop participants can exchange or donate those items giving them a second life and keeping them out of the landfill. Activities include a ‘make and take’ food waste project and an eco-friendly kids’ craft.
Registration is full for this event. Please check out our events calendar to find another upcoming workshop!
Today’s blog post was written by High Tech Middle Media Arts 6th grader, Kaiya. Kaiya’s class studied the impact that humans have on our local water resources and their contribution to food waste on a global scale. The students looked into water and food waste issues locally, statewide, nationwide and globally. The class hopes to educate the local community about waste and pollution issues and inspire change.
Have you ever wondered how expiration dates work? Wondered how important they are? Well, I certainly did. So to those who still do, let me explain.
Let’s start with a short history lesson. Expiration dates were introduced in 1950 at a store called Marks & Spencers. It wasn’t until 1970 when “Sell By” and “Best By” tags were added to most supermarkets. Now that our history lesson has concluded, let’s get to the interesting stuff!
Expiration dates aren’t supposed to show a fruit’s edibility, but the fruit’s “peak quality”; not when it’s expired. It’s because of this common misconception that people discard perfectly good food! So actually, expiration dates are optional. They are suggestions meant to assist. It’s more important to know your food and to simply throw it out because of the expiration date.
Americans discontinued making their food, but still wanted to be informed about how it was made. This caused the creation of expiration dates. The facilities did tests on fruit, seeing how long they usually lasted. The most common result would become its “expiration date.”
We are wasting food.
When shopping for fruits, people are usually attracted to the apple that has the least bruises, causing an unnecessary amount of food waste. The food that’s wasted converts to a brown lump and produces a white puss. That’s mold. Mold should be thrown out, but if it’s just brown, it should be fine. Brown spots on fruit are sugar spots, meaning they amplify the flavor. They are perfectly safe to consume, but if it’s a blob of brown, you should throw it away. These spots are discovered on bananas when they continue to ripen, due to ethylene. Supermarkets tend to throw away brown fruit because it doesn’t sell. Food is wasted for no reason.
Brown fruit is oxidized fruit, meaning that air made them turn brown. Brown fruit is still edible! Apples turn brown in recently bitten parts. The brown on parts on apples reduce taste, but it can still be consumed.
Is there anything I shouldn’t eat when expired? Yes. Infant formula loses its nutrients passed its expiration date. Expired deli meats give you food poisoning, as well as eggs. Dairy gets bacteria buildup when it expires, so it also shouldn’t be consumed.
What moldy food can I eat?
Cheese increases in value when moldy. It tastes more flavorful, which makes a higher profit when sold. However, only specific types of cheese are edible with mold. Cheddar, Colby, Parmesan, and Swiss should be fine to consume. Other soft cheeses like cottage cheese, cream cheese, and ricotta cheese with mold should be discarded.
About the Author
Kaiya is a 6th grader at HTMMA. Her blog was democratically selected by her peers to be featured on I Love A Clean San Diego’s website. Her work will be exhibited alongside other students at a community beach cleanup coordinated by the HTMMA students.
Did you know that 80% of coastal debris stems from inland sources? With your help, we can eliminate trash and waste before they pollute our ocean while preserving the canyon’s natural state!
Join I Love A Clean San Diego at the Clean Canyons for a Clean Coast cleanup on Saturday, June 30, 2018 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Volunteers will meet at the church located at 4195 Camino del Rio S, San Diego, CA 92116.
Share this event with your friends and family to help make an impact on San Diego communities. Join in our efforts to be zero waste by bringing your own reusable items such as a water bottle, work gloves, or a bucket!
All volunteers are required to fill out a waiver form to participate and anyone under the age of 18 needs a waiver signed by their parent or guardian.
One of the best ways people choose to spend their holiday weekends is on the beach — especially in sunny San Diego. With Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day coming up, families and friends will flock to the coast to celebrate their long weekends. In response to the influx of locals and tourists, ILACSD and the San Diego Clean Beach Coalition (SDCBC) will place 200 temporary trash and recycling bins along some of the city’s busiest beaches to reduce the amount of beach and marine litter.
A Clean Beach Coalition recycling bins set out for the Fourth of July last summer!
Over the past decade, SDCBC has kept 3.5 million pounds of trash off the beach and out of the ocean. This past year, over 61,000 pounds of debris were collected during the summer holiday weekends. With the support of Think Blue San Diego, PB Shore Club, FreePB, and more, SDCBC aims to educate beachgoers about the benefits of swapping reusable alternatives for single-use products.
How can you make the most out of your holiday weekends while staying sustainable? SDCBC recommends that visitors bring hard plastic coolers, refillable water bottles, and food storage containers to reduce the amount of disposables items brought to the beach. Avoid bringing plastic straws and utensils! And make sure all recyclables are clean, dry, and empty. Spend less time worrying about your waste by visiting our zero waste database, WasteFreeSD.org, for everything you need to know about reusable options!
Summer can stay sustainable by simply packing reusable options when preparing to head to the beach!
In fact, your only worry while basking in the sun at the beach should be when to reapply sunscreen. That is why SDCBC’s goal is to ensure that the safety of the community and the ecosystem is not compromised by the impact of litter. With these easily accessible CBC bins, visitors are able to responsibly throw away and recycle their waste while still enjoying their vacations. Even at the most crowded beaches, people will still be able to enjoy the sun, sand, and the ocean in San Diego!
Not planning to hit the beach for the holidays? No worries! You can still party with a purpose while you celebrate this summer! A picture is all it takes to support ILACSD as the local Keep America Beautiful affiliate. With Absolut Vodka’s new Absolut America campaign, for every photo submitted through the site, $1 will be donated to Keep America Beautiful or another selected charity. After submitting your photo, you can share the decked out picture on social media to show how easy it is to support ILACSD and Keep America Beautiful all summer while you #PartyWithAPurpose with #AbsolutAmerica.
Support Keep America Beautiful and its affiliates by submitting a photo of how you party with a purpose to Absolut America!
With the Clean Beach Coalition and Absolut America, it is simple to #DoBeautifulThings. Just by recognizing the impact that waste has on water ecosystems, San Diegans are better prepared to act wisely when it comes to waste, especially during the summer holidays. For more information about the Clean Beach Coalition, make sure to visit CleanBeachCoalition.org.
As summer comes to an end, Labor Day is fast approaching, which means there is one last busy weekend for beach-goers to enjoy some fun in the sun! All of that fun and sun also brings an influx of visitors into San Diego during the holidays, and with all the extra people comes an increased amount of waste that overwhelms our current infrastructure.
Join ILACSD and the Clean Beach Coalition to ensure our beaches stay clean over the long holiday weekends. Help ILACSD assemble temporary trash and recycling bins that will be placed across San Diego beaches and bays to encourage beach-goers to properly dispose of their items throughout the busy Labor Day weekend. Join us in keeping our beaches clean!
Volunteers are required to fill out two waiver forms and anyone under the age of 18 needs both waivers signed by their parent or guardian. For this opportunity, all volunteers must be 16 years of age or over to participate.
If you are interested in participating, please email Natalia at nking@cleanSD.org to sign up!
It’s summer in San Diego, and that means basking in the sun on our beaches and bays to celebrate 4th of July! All of that fun and sun also brings an influx of visitors into San Diego during the holidays, and with all the extra people comes an increased amount of waste that overwhelms our current infrastructure.
Join ILACSD and the Clean Beach Coalition to ensure our beaches stay clean over the long holiday weekends. Help ILACSD assemble temporary trash and recycling bins that will be placed across San Diego beaches and bays to encourage beach-goers to properly dispose of their items throughout the busy 4th of July weekend. Join us in keeping our beaches clean!
Volunteers are required to fill out two waiver forms and anyone under the age of 18 needs both waivers signed by their parent or guardian. For this opportunity, all volunteers must be 16 years of age or over to participate.
If you are interested in participating, please email Natalia at nking@cleanSD.org to sign up!
Spring is in full swing! In San Diego, that means basking in the sun on our beaches and bays to celebrate Memorial Day! All of that fun and sun can also bring an increased amount of trash to our beautiful city. Join ILACSD and the Clean Beach Coalition to ensure our beaches stay clean over the long holiday weekends. Help ILACSD assemble temporary trash and recycling bins that will be placed across San Diego beaches and bays to encourage beach-goers to properly dispose of their items throughout the busy Memorial Day weekend. Join us in keeping our beaches clean!
All of our volunteers are required to fill out two waiver forms and anyone under the age of 18 needs both waivers signed by their parent or guardian. For this opportunity, all volunteers must be 16 years of age or over to participate.
If you are interested in participating, please email Natalia at nking@cleanSD.org to sign up!
This past weekend, we celebrated Earth Day by hosting our 16th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanupwhere we empowered an estimated 6,000 volunteers to give back at 113 cleanup sites around San Diego County! Volunteers including residents, corporate groups, and civic organizations transformed their appreciation for San Diego’s environment into action for Mother Earth by putting in the time and effort to give back in their local communities. During this three-hour cleanup, volunteers enhanced the overall health and beauty of San Diego’s natural environment by removing more than 175,000 pounds of trash and debris from San Diego County.
Volunteers joined site captain, Brittany Novick (Miss Scuba International), to help celebrate her birthday and Earth Day by protecting the environment at the Mission Beach Belmont Park cleanup site!
Among the debris, there were several notable odd items collected during the cleanup including: 19 shoes at one site, a giant teddy bear, and a bathrobe.
Volunteers also restored the local environment through beautification projects such as painting park structures, planting native plants and trees, mulching, and weeding. Thanks to thousands of volunteers, 113 parks, beaches and community spaces received special care to keep the area healthy and beautiful for the community.
Painting was just one of many beautification projects that volunteers could take part in on top of litter removal at Creek to Bay!
Creek to Bay was an opportunity for the community to go green in more ways than one. With a push toward zero waste practices, we encouraged all youth and adult volunteers to be more sustainable by choosing to bring at least one reusable item for the cleanup like a water bottle, work bucket, or gloves. Many stepped up to the challenge! Volunteers could showcase their zero waste commitments in the Sony Photo Contest with the 2018 theme of “Rocking Reusables” or by entering the Bling Your Bucket Contest. Both contests offer prizes to the winners to celebrate their sustainability and creativity.
Gabriel used recycled items to decorate his bucket for the Bling Your Bucket Contest helping cut back on the waste created at the cleanup!
Creek to Bay also received attention from several of San Diego’s elected officials who visited cleanup sites in their respective districts including:
San Diego City Councilmembers Barbara Bry, Myrtle Cole, Mark Kersey, David Alvarez, and Georgette Gomez
Assemblymembers Todd Gloria and Shirley Weber
Councilmember Bry helps kick off the Creek to Bay at the Scripps Pier site!
The entire I Love A Clean San Diego team could not be more thrilled and inspired by the results from the Creek to Bay Cleanup. Joining the team this year as Community Events Coordinator, Nik Kennedy reflected on his first Creek to Bay Cleanup experience:
This was my first year planning Creek to Bay, and after months of preparing it was amazing to be a part of the event! From recruiting volunteers to organizing activities, I was excited to see so many neighborhood volunteers come out and beautify Azalea Park and all of San Diego County! This was such an undertaking, and it was incredible to watch all of our work pay off for a cleaner environment.
Major thanks go out to all of our sponsors for the Creek to Bay Cleanup!
Creek to Bay would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors and partners! Thank you all for your commitment to a clean, green, and beautiful San Diego!
Thank you to all of our Creek to Bay sponsors for investing in a cleaner San Diego!
City of San Diego, Think Blue
Wells Fargo
CBS 8/CW San Diego
Republic Services
EDCO
Walmart
Cox Communications
County of San Diego
County of San Diego Watershed Protection Program
Project Clean Water
Anheuser Busch
City of San Marcos
General Dynamics/ NASSCO
Dart Container
Sony
Bank of America
Dudek
Teledyne Instruments, Inc
San Diego Regional Airport Authority
City of La Mesa
Port of San Diego
City of Imperial Beach
City of Chula Vista
Michael Baker International
U.S. Bank
BAE Shipyard
Brown and Caldwell
Mitchell Financial
City of Escondido (Utilities Department)
City of Escondido (Recycling Division)
Dog Beach Dog Wash
Power Crunch
From the entire ILACSD team, THANK YOU to every volunteer, partner, sponsor, and community member who made Creek to Bay such an incredible success! We couldn’t do it without you!
This May, I Love A Clean San Diego will bring 1,000 elementary school students, teachers, and volunteers to the beach to become a living piece of artwork at South Mission Beach to celebrate the annual Kids’ Ocean Day.Through a partnership with the California Coastal Commission, ILACSD will host San Diego County’s 20th Annual Kids’ Ocean Day! Kids’ Ocean Day kicks off before we even reach the beach with in-school assemblies to educate the students on the importance of our ocean, how it is being harmed due to human actions, and how we each play a role in protecting the health of our oceans. Then, on May 24th, these students will unite in a beach cleanup, followed by the formation of an image only visible from the sky. Check out the video below to get a glimpse of what to expect at Kids’ Ocean Day.
This year, the statewide theme is “Waves of Change,” evoking the powerful force we can be when united in our actions. Forming the aerial art message through the collective efforts of each individual sitting in the sand is a perfect metaphor for how our combined daily habits like refusing single-use plastics have incredible power in shaping the health of our environment. We are grateful to have so many young participants engaging in this cause and hope this event will propel their momentum in acting as wise environmental stewards.
Revealing I Love A Clean San Diego’s 2018 Kids’ Ocean Day “WAVES OF CHANGE” Aerial Art Design:
2018 Kids’ Ocean Day Aerial Art Design
If you would like to be a part of this event, we’re looking for adult volunteers (18 years of age and older) to lead students during the cleanup and the aerial art. If you’re interested, you can find more details on the Kids’ Ocean Day event page or register here! As a thank you, all volunteers will receive a photo of the completed aerial art image as a keepsake! We hope you’ll come together with us this year to be a wave of change for our environment!
Big news out of San Diego recently hit the recycling world. Zheng Chen, an assistant professor and nano-engineer from UCSD has developed a new method to recycle lithium-ion batteries. More specifically, according to a report by the San Diego Union Tribune, “He has developed a way to recycle used cathodes from spent lithium-ion batteries and restore them to the point that they work as good as new.” Considering those cathodes contain cobalt, a rare earth metal with a finite supply, this type of recycling has a momentous impact on the future of the tech world, most notably electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries that use rare earth metals like cobalt that have a finite supply.
So what does this mean for you? Well, maybe you saw an article headline and figured you can start tossing your lithium-ion batteries into your blue bin (false!). Or maybe you’re confused because you thought you already recycled all of your batteries. While the energy in the battery itself may not be reusable (at a large scale just yet), the materials themselves are 100% recyclable. With lithium-ion batteries powering many cell phones, laptops, power tools, and other electronics, it is likely we all have a few of these floating around our home. However, according to Chen, less than 3% of lithium-ion batteries around the world are recycled. For that reason, it’s important for us all to have accurate information on the proper way to handle these batteries at the end of their lifespan. We enlisted our friends over at Universal Waste Disposal Company to help us give you the low down on recycling lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium-ion batteries are rechargeable.
Lithium-ion batteries are rechargeable, but even rechargeable batteries have a lifespan. Once a lithium-ion battery is completely spent or degraded, it should be properly stored until it is able to be recycled. While you cannot simply recycle these in your blue bin, according to California Law (AB1125) most retailers that sell rechargeable batteries are required to accept and recycle these consumer batteries. If you prefer a drop off option, you can check with local retailers to find one that accepts lithium-ion batteries. For pick up recycling services, businesses like UWDC specialize in universal waste recycling.
Until you are able to recycle your lithium-ion batteries, it is extremely important to store them properly. You’ve probably heard stories of cell phones exploding or catching fire. This is related to the battery within the phone. When lithium-ion batteries “catch fire” or “explode” they are experiencing thermal runaway. Thermal runaway is essentially a chemical reaction inside the battery producing heat that causes additional chemical reactions that result in increasing heat until there is nothing left to react. So be very cautious if your device begins smoking, sizzling or popping. Stay alert! Lithium-ion battery packs typically contain several cells. If your device does catch fire, even though one cell may be extinguished, the residual heat may cause thermal runaway in the adjacent cells.
The number of lithium-ion batteries that are recycled is very low since they are housed inside of many devices. The batteries commonly remain in our homes when the old device gets tucked away in a drawer or storage space.
Thermal runaway can be the result of design flaws (inadequate venting, poor chemistry, inadequate safety features), user damage (dropping, crushing, puncturing), improper packaging or storage, or improper charging (wrong charger, cheap chargers, overcharging). To prevent thermal runaway, proper care and storage are key. While the battery is still in use, keep them out of the heat and freezing temperatures, use the charger that came with the lithium-ion powered device, keep them dry, and avoid overcharging them. When your batteries are at the end of their life, make sure to store them at room temperature. Tape over the terminals so that they do not make contact with each other.
The future of the environment is our responsibility and in this case, it’s the law.Batteries of all types must be recycled. Please be sure to locate an authorized battery recycler in your area to properly recycle your used batteries.
