Every year our goal here at ILACSD is to get more San Diegans involved in making our beautiful city cleaner and healthier and to protect the San Diego way of life we all know and love. 2012 was no exception, and more of you came out to volunteer in your community than ever before!
So how did we do in 2012?
More Education. We know that the only way we can make sure San Diego stays clean long into the future, is if we educate our kids today about how their everyday actions affect the world around them. In 2012, our Educators gave 531 presentations – over 10 a week! – to more than 37,000 youth and adults. That mean our donors and supporters (that’s you!) helped us reach out to 20% more San Diegans than we did in 2011!
More Volunteers. Volunteering gives residents pride in their community and empowers them to take responsibility for keeping it clean. In 2012, more than 30,000 of you came out to lend a hand in keeping your neighborhoods, beaches, canyons and creeks clean! Cleanups are no walk in the park, picking up trash is dirty work and we couldn’t do it without dedicated volunteers like you.
Less Trash. It might seem like with more volunteers, we should be picking up more trash right? Well less trash is actually great news. It means that the areas we’re cleaning up are staying cleaner year after year! It also means that our two pronged approach, cleanups and litter prevention through education and resources like WasteFreeSD.org, are making an impact on not only our local environment, but on the people who live, work, and play throughout San Diego. Still, 359,000 pounds of trash and debris were picked up by our volunteers this year, and that’s no small feat!
…but More Recycling. Even though volunteers picked up less trash in 2012, a higher percentage of that trash was recyclable to the tune of about 93,000 pounds. Recycling more debris keeps it out of our landfills and saves resources when it’s made into something new. If you want to know more about why recycling is important, check out the Recycle 101 section of WasteFreeSD.org!
Results like these don’t happen overnight. It takes a hard working staff, dedicated volunteers, and the financial support of donors, foundations, local businesses, and local government all working together for one purpose: a cleaner, healthier San Diego!
We’re looking forward to working with all of our partners and volunteers in 2013 as we lead up to celebrating ILACSD’s 60th birthday in 2014!
2 Comments
It’s been an honor to participate and teach our children to take care of our community. If they sometimes end exhausted because of the heat, it shows them that it takes to everyone to place trash were it belongs always so our communities will looks nice and clean. I think my girl scouts would love to continue participating with the ILACSD community cleanups. They love to receive their participation patch* for their uniform!
Our troop is a Cadette (6 grade) troop now and they have participated since they were in 2nd grade as Brownies. Have pictures to share if you need! Also, in the last 2 years my Cub Scouts have joined us. Keep up the good work ILACSD!
Mrs. Lety, GS Troop 5344
*Ups! That brought to my mind I haven’t collected last year’s cleanup patches…
Thank you for getting your troop involved and we hope they continue to volunteer at cleanups! We would love to see pictures, you can send them to iloveacleansd@gmail.com 🙂 Also, you can definitely still get your patches, just contact Lexi at lambrogi@cleansd.org!
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