Join I Love A Clean San Diego, San Diego Canyonlands, and Think Blue San Diego for a litter cleanup in Hollywood Canyon! We will divert litter from the San Diego BayWatershed and keep it from traveling to the Pacific Ocean.
We will be set-up with a check-in table and supplies at Hollywood Park. Join us at 3pm to learn about our watersheds and help us clean up the neighborhood!
We will sort, weigh, and dispose of collected litter, and after the cleanup you can request a community service letter in your Community Hub dashboard.
This event requires a signed release-of-liability waiver for all volunteers, and anyone under 18 needs a waiver signed by a guardian. Please download and print the waiver below, sign, and bring with you to this cleanup.
Trashcan overflowing? Raising kids can produce a LOT of waste, but we can help!
Register today for I Love A Clean San Diego’s upcoming free webinar, Zero Waste Parenting Tips and Tricks, on Wednesday, October 26th, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. We will focus on the importance of involving children in decision making surrounding sustainable choices and emphasizing our connection to the planet. From infants to teens, we’ll share how to integrate low-waste habits into daily routines in achievable ways, including toys, snacks, birthday parties, activities, and school supplies.
We will be joined by guest speaker and zero waste parenting expert Fredrika Syren! Syren is a San Diego local, mother of three, and author of “A Practical Guide to Zero Waste for Families”.
Please register to receive the Zoom link.
Thank you to the City of Encinitas for funding and partnering with us to offer this webinar. We can’t wait to see you there!
Hi my name is Hannah and I am currently one of the Outreach Interns at I Love A Clean San Diego! I am graduating this May from San Diego State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sustainability. My love for the environment started in high school after taking a course in environmental science, which led me to my major. I am always trying to find ways to be more sustainable, including my upcoming college graduation.
Graduation season is quickly approaching. From kindergarten to college, there will be millions of students all over the globe walking across a stage to receive their diploma. Here are 4 ways to be sustainable this graduation season and have a green graduation!
Send evites to your friends and family to attend your graduation ceremony or party rather than paper announcements! You will not only be saving the planet, but also saving money. The online alternative to invitations is affordable, easy, and environmentally friendly! Websites such as Paperless Post, Greenvelope, and Punch Bowl all offer free or low cost alternatives.
Rent or recycle your graduation gown! There are more than 5 million high school and college graduates every year each purchasing a graduation gown they will probably never wear again and could end up in a landfill, if it is not recycled. Greener Grads is a website that provides low cost cap, gown, and tassel rentals. If you have already graduated or purchased your gown, don’t fret, Greener Grads will recycle it for you after you are done.
Arrange a carpool for your guests attending your graduation or encourage them to take public transportation. Not only will there be tons of traffic getting to and from the ceremony, but they will be making a positive impact on the environment. Since SDSU has a trolley stop right on campus, my family is staying at a hotel in close proximity to a trolley stop for my graduation this May for a quick, sustainable, and hassle free journey.
Encourage your friends and family to refrain from showering you with balloons and candy leis at your graduation ceremony, and let them know their attendance is more than enough! We are currently facing a helium shortage, you know the stuff that we fill balloons with, and studies suggest supplies could be depleted before the middle of the century. Helium is a non-renewable resource, so once it’s gone it’s gone. Another popular graduation ceremony gift are candy leis, but candy wrappers are made from mixed materials that can be very difficult to recycle.
We’ll that’s it! If you’re graduating this spring or if you know someone who is, take these tips with you as you celebrate this incredible milestone with our environment in mind. For more sustainable ideas for other occasions, follow I Love A Clean San Diego on Pinterest!
Today’s blog post comes from our Community Events Coordinator, Lexi Ambrogi, who is one of only 2 people who fearlessly and tirelessly planned this year’s Creek to Bay Cleanup!
As the numbers and results trickle into our office, we’re growing more and more confident of one thing: our 12th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup was a success!
Flash back to 5AM Saturday morning. Our staff members’ alarms were all set to right around this time, and I’m betting that they looked out their windows and thought what I did: that wind! That rain! How is it possibly this loud outside right now?
But fortunately for us, the weather actually improved throughout the morning, and by the time volunteers started reporting to our record 96 cleanup sites throughout San Diego County, it was almost pleasant outside.
While the threat of rain may have kept a handful of volunteers in bed that morning, preliminary totals indicate that we had more than 5,000 people cleaning up their local creeks, beaches and bays as part of this event! And while the trash totals are still being compiled, we’re expecting that these volunteers removed roughly 150,000 pounds of litter and debris from their communities.
Two volunteers pulled this tractor tire out of Chollas Creek, though maybe with a little help…
Every year at this event—and Coastal Cleanup Day in September—we look forward to hearing about the interesting and bizarre things that our volunteers find tucked away in canyons, riverbeds and trails. Some of my favorites this year include a cast iron bathtub (Alpine), a teddy bear scientist (Golden Hill), a 6-foot stuffed bear (City Heights), and a 5-pound bag of raw chicken wings (City Heights).
Despite the smoking ban at San Diego County beaches, volunteers are reporting that cigarette butts were once again the most commonly found item at their cleanup sites. With the help of initiatives like our Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, we’re hoping that we’ll see fewer butts on the ground and more in the trash can where they belong. Thanks to all of our Creek to Bay Cleanup sponsors who help make this event possible each year!
A family with the Bank of America volunteer team at Memorial Community Park works together to clean up Logan Heights.
Looking to join us at our next event? We have a bunch of cleanups coming up in May and June. Click here for more information on how to get involved!
Volunteers at Fletcher Cove in Solana Beach relax after a morning of hard work. Way to go with those reusable buckets, guys!
Today’s post comes from I Love A Clean San Diego’s Director of Development & Marketing, Morgan Justice-Black, who thinks that annual program totals are pretty much the cats pajamas!
As someone who spends most of my days fundraising, there is no more exciting time of the year than the end of the year. Seeing those last few donations come in before the new year rolls around and crossing my fingers that we meet our projected revenue goals has become an annual tradition for me. But I also love the end of the year for another reason…the opportunity to compile our program totals for the year!
My coworkers run their programs pretty much up until the last week of the year. This year, we had two cleanups in December, as well as education presentations in schools through December 19th! Shout out to Mission Estancia Elementary in Carlsbad for being our last presentations of 2013! Naturally, the holiday “break” was spent doing some serious math, adding up the total number of volunteers we mobilized, the number of education sessions that we hosted, and much more.
Well, I’m happy to report that the results are in! And once again, I’m in awe of how much an organization of just 12 staff can get done!
All in all, 2013 was a great year for I Love A Clean San Diego. But I’m confident that 2014 will be even better. Why? Because we are turning 60! Not me personally of course, but I Love A Clean San Diego! Since 1954, we’ve been working to prevent pollution in San Diego County, giving us a BIG reason to celebrate! So stay tuned for how we are going to make 2014 a year to remember. Oh, and if you didn’t get your donation in before the end of the year, our mailbox is always open 😉
If you are reading this message, then you have had a hand in helping I Love A Clean San Diego thrive in 2013. Whether through volunteering at a cleanup, approaching our table at a community event, or providing a financial donation, more than 100,000 San Diegans have made some sort of commitment to keeping San Diego clean this year! And for that, we are truly thankful.
As we look toward 2014…just a couple days away…we are all very excited to celebrate the 60th anniversary of an organization that has reinvented itself so many times to continue to stay current amidst all sorts of environmental challenges. Next week, we will recap all of our 2013 accomplishments, as well as give a sneak peak of some of our plans to celebrate the big 6-0!
In the meantime, all of us at I Love A Clean San Diego wish you and your families a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Happy New Year from the ILACSD team top row L-R: Erika Bjorkquist, Monica Rosquillas, Natalie Roberts middle row L-R: Ann Hirsch, Amanda Sweet, Pauline Martinson, Samantha Quinsey bottom row L-R: Barbara Lopez, Anna Fadem, Lexi Ambrogi, Brittany Fischer, Morgan Justice-Black
Join Aimee Edmonds and her family as volunteers for this year’s Creek to Bay Cleanup, and help protect our coast!
When Aimee Edmonds’ daughter’s American Heritage Girls troop chose our Creek to Bay Cleanup as their spring service project, she had no idea she would soon be bringing together not only the troop, but also her church, to clean up the area around their local elementary school. While looking around the Creek to Bay website for a cleanup site for the AHG troop Aimee said, “I quickly narrowed my search to Mira Mesa on the Creek to Bay website and there discovered ILACSD’s outstanding need for a Creek to Bay site in none other than…Mira Mesa!”
Mira Mesa, and specifically Hage Elementary School, is where Aimee and her family attend Newbreak Church, so she knew that the area was in need of not only litter pickup, but landscaping and painting projects. Aimee immediately reached out to our Community Events Department and signed up as the site captain for Mira Mesa. As the site captain, Aimee will receive training and supplies for her site from ILACSD and then will lead the volunteers the day of Creek to Bay.
When we asked Aimee why she though events like the Creek to Bay Cleanup were important she said,
“A clean San Diego is a visible expression that we as residents responsibly care about and appreciate our community where we live and breathe…Serving others is cross-generational and cross-cultural as it builds character in our youth, adolescents, and adults. The next generation is taught how to be good stewards of the things in which we are entrusted.”
Site captains like Aimee are the heart and soul of the Creek to Bay Cleanup, we could not mobilize 6,000+ volunteers at 92 sites across the county – all on one day – without them! Aimee says, “I look forward to bringing people together to help meet real needs at Hage Elementary. We want to show their administration, staff, teachers, students and families we value them as we come alongside them.”
Thanks Aimee and all our other site captains for the great work that you do as an extension of the ILACSD staff!
