Encanto Community Cleanup

Join I Love A Clean San Diego as we kickoff the Adopt-A-Park program at Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center on Saturday, November 3rd, from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm. Volunteers will meet at 6401 Skyline Drive, San Diego, CA, 92114 to participate in a litter pickup to prevent waste from entering our waterways before they make it to the ocean. We have partnered with Lowe’s and Keep America Beautiful to host this cleanup, so there will also be beautification projects at the Recreation Center – come ready to spruce up the area!

We will have cleanup supplies, snacks, and water. We also provide community service hours and Letters of Appreciation for volunteers. This is a great opportunity for students and families to learn ways to protect our local environment!

We encourage volunteers to bring their own reusable items such as water bottles, work gloves, and buckets to promote zero waste practices and help us in our mission to have a zero waste, litter free and environmentally engaged San Diego region!

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.

See you there!

For a map and directions, click HERE.
For the waiver, click HERE.
Register today!

Loving Lemon Grove and Enhancing Encanto

This year, I Love A Clean San Diego was selected as a recipient of the 2017 Keep America Beautiful/Lowe’s Community Partners Grant Program which has provided funds to conserve, protect, and enhance areas in Lemon Grove and Encanto.

The 2017 Keep America Beautiful/Lowe’s Community Partners Grant Program engages local volunteers to take action to benefit their community with projects that focus on critical needs. I Love A Clean San Diego’s grant program has already impacted both Lemon Grove and Encanto by supporting beautification and cleanup events in those communities. One final day of action for Lemon Grove is still to come on November 4th.

Lemon Grove Park volunteers had a blast while giving back in their community!

As a result of this grant program, on September 16th, we were able to expand two of our smaller Coastal Cleanup Day sites into large scale cleanups with additional projects to improve the parks! On this day, we had focused beautification efforts on Encanto Park and Lemon Grove Park. Between the two sites, over 130 volunteers removed 129 pounds of trash and 57 pounds of recycling from the areas. On top of the debris removed, volunteers accomplished impressive feats by removing brush, weeding landscape, planting 90 native plants, spread mulch, painting 9 structures, and removing graffiti.

Even with all the fun, those volunteers completed many beautification projects around the park!

On October 21st, we hosted the third event in Lemon Grove’s Civic Center Park. With a turnout of over 120 individuals, volunteers joined forces to remove litter – collecting 128 pounds of trash and 28 pounds of recycling, as well as some household hazardous waste like batteries and syringes. In addition to the cleanup, volunteers collected an unprecedented amount of cigarette litter from landscaped areas, spread new mulch over approximately 200 square feet of landscape, planted 95 various plants in that space, and painted the exterior of a nearby public restroom.  Overall, volunteers made efforts to drastically improve the area surrounding the Lemon Grove Depot station, a landmark of Lemon Grove, and removed over 150 pounds of debris from entering the storm water system and flowing to the Pacific Ocean!

Volunteers completed painting and planting projects at Lemon Grove Park on October 21st!

The work isn’t done just yet! We’ll be in Lemon Grove once again for a final event as a part of this grant program. On Saturday, November 4th, we are slated to complete another cleanup featuring even more beautification projects for Lemon Grove’s Berry Street Park. Volunteers can still register for this event and become a channel for change in their community. So roll up your sleeves, and let’s get to work!

Join the conversation #AmericaRecyclesDay

Ani_team15Ani has written another amazing blog for this week! If you follow us on social media, you know that we’re gearing up for America Recycles Day, the one day a year that is dedicated to making the most of our resources through recycling and upcycling! By the end of this blog, not only will you know what ARD is all about, but we hope you’ll be inspired to celebrate with us by boosting our recycling efforts here in San Diego!  

The 8th annual America Recycles Day is November 15th so be sure to mark your calendar! The goal of America Recycles Day, an initiative led by Keep America Beautiful, is to acknowledge our recycling efforts and stir up a conversation about what more can be done to ensure our communities stay litter-free. This is ever so important in San Diego as the city is moving towards a 75% waste diversion rate by 2020, an ambitious goal that will engage the community to think twice about what is thrown out. That means that in addition to beefing up our recycling efforts, the city is also encouraging upcycling and repairing many things that would have otherwise been thrown away.

End of campaign infographic
Click here to see the full infographic highlighting last year’s results!

Last year during our campaign, an estimated 1,015 gallons of paint, 255 gallons of motor oil, and 980 gallons of other household hazardous waste was properly disposed of thanks to the help of Waste Free SD, the County of San Diego’s Recycling and Household Hazardous Waste database lead by yours truly, I Love A Clean San Diego.

What’s new this year?

  • GLEANERS! Don’t know what a “gleaner” is? Not to worry, we’ll get you up to speed!
  • Test your blue bin knowledge. Let us know how much you know about curbside recycling.
  • In need of a fast way to recycle your old cell phone and make some cash? You’ll learn more about one of my favorite tried and true options!

This year we would also like to recognize Sony for supporting our America Recycles Day campaign and allowing us to share important recycling information with all of you through social media. Sony is one of our longest standing supporters, helping us achieve our mission year round by volunteering at cleanups and supporting our environmental education programs. Thank you, Sony!

SONY_logo_blue_no(R)
Sony is our America Recycles Day sponsor! Thanks for investing in a clean and sustainable SD, Sony!

Be sure to connect with I Love A Clean San Diego on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to keep the conversation going during our 2-week long campaign. We want to congratulate your efforts and encourage everyone to recycle! Let’s keep San Diego clean, together #AmericaRecyclesDay

 

34% – we can do better!

SONY DSCToday’s blog comes for our Hotline Assistant, Ani, who is always on the look out for ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.  Many of us know the basics of recycling: paper, rigid plastic containers, aluminum, however, there is one part of the home that is often neglected, the bathroom. Read on to learn how you can keep perfectly good recyclables out of the landfill, and instead give that shampoo bottle or toilet paper roll a new life!

 

bathroom-recyc_5Let me start by asking, do you recycle your empty shampoo bottles? What about the toilet paper roll? Surprisingly enough, not many people do. A survey conducted by the Ad Council, a non-profit organization, revealed that only 34% of Americans recycle bathroom items. More surprising, 22% of Americans would not toss bathroom items in the recycling bins if the bin is located outside the bathroom.

What kind of changes can we make to form a habit of recycling in our bathroom? Here are some suggestions:

1. Place a recycling bin in the bathroom to serve as a constant reminder to recycle

2. Inform others in the household of the items that can and cannot be recycled (see graphic).

3. Assign a recycling expert in your household. I found it useful to assign my youngest niece the role of “Recycling Expert”. She is responsible for making sure everyone in the household recycles properly.

4. Make a bathroom recycling sign. Unilever, a consumer goods company, cleverly developed “Rinse. Recycle. Reimagine” in partnership with Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ynVVgeaFdg]

How do we recycle these items? Give your recyclable bathroom items a new life by lightly rinsing out the left over contents from empty bottles and removing the lid or plastic pumps (not yet recyclable).  Remember to recycle empty cardboard packaging like toothpaste boxes and tissue boxes. And also make sure that aerosol cans, like air fresheners and shaving cream, are completely empty before recycling (yes, you can place empty aerosol cans in the blue bin, yay!)

bathroomRecycling
“Rinse. Recycle. Reimagine.” It’s that easy!

So what happens after it is tossed into the blue bin? Bottles composed of PET plastic are recycled and used in carpet fiber, fiberfill for winter jackets and sleeping bags, car upholstery, and boat sails. Other recyclable materials composed of HDPE plastic are turned into flexible construction pipes, and patio furniture. To read more about what other recyclable items become, visit IWantToBeRecycled.org

Another solution to our abundant aBack-to-MAC-Program_2ccumulation of bathroom recyclables is shop for items with minimal packaging or shop in bulk. Products like LUSH Cosmetics strive to minimally package goods in store and opting out on packaging is always an option. You can also earn incentives for recycling your empty make-up containers in-store. Take MAC Cosmetics for example. If you take six empty MAC Cosmetic product containers back to the store, they will give you a free lipstick through their Back to M.A.C. program.

If you want to purchase items in bulk, check out Blue Dot Refill in Ocean Beach. Tunnamed-2hey offer customers the opportunity to bring their own empty bottles and jars to fill up on shampoos, body care products, and cleaning agents. They also accept empty bottles in-store for other customers to fill up and use, so start saving those bottles so you can use them again!

Lastly, another great way to limit the need to shop for bathroom items is by making them yourself right at home! Check out these great recipes on our Pinterest page and be on the lookout for a future blog all about simple DIY beauty products tested and approved by ILACSD staff!

 To get answers to other recycling questions, visit our database www.WasteFreeSD.org!

 

 

 

Greetings from DC!

MJB-2010-photoshop-picToday’s blog comes from our Director of Development & Marketing, Morgan Justice Black, who along with another member of the ILACSD team, are in Washington DC this week for the Keep America Beautiful conference.

 

 

Hello from a chilly Washington, D.C. Even though it may only be 25 degrees outside, we are having a great time at the Keep America Beautiful National Conference learning more about how affiliates throughout the US create vibrant communities through community beautification, litter prevention, waste reduction and recycling! We made it to D.C., despite blizzard warnings and having to sprint through the Philadelphia airport to make our connection. And once we arrived…it was snowing! Quite a change for the two of us, both born and raised in San Diego! Well, the conference kicked off with a keynote address from Peter Kageyama, the man who has written two books about loving your city. How perfect, since we have a little fondness for the word “love” too! He spoke about the importance of gathering people together to interact casually in the outdoors. Can you guess where the most social place probably is in your city? The dog park!

Last night was the awards dinner, and I have to say that ILACSD certainly cleaned up! We were up and down accepting three…yep…three first place awards! And we have the pictures to prove it!

Natalie Roberts, Morgan Justice Black and Keep America Beautiful COO Becky Lyons with out awards!
Natalie Roberts, Morgan Justice Black and Keep America Beautiful COO Becky Lyons with our awards!

Our awards included first place for our Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, a program that we implement in San Diego in partnership with the Surfrider Foundation’s Hold onto your Butts program. Over the last five years, we’ve installed and maintained more than 100 ash receptacles in San Diego, helping make a dent in the amount of cigarette butts picked up during cleanups! In fact, in the areas that we’ve done this program, cigarette litter has decreased by an average 64%! This was a well deserved award for Natalie and her team in the Community Events Department!

KAB pic 3
Natalie accepting the CLPP award from KAB staffer Bronwen Evans.

 

Next, ILACSD was the recipient of a storytelling award, and this is the first year that this award category has been offered! Keep America Beautiful judges sifted through dozens of promotional materials, media articles, social media messages and more to identify five affiliates who are doing best at telling their story of building better communities. This is a true team win for us, as every member of the ILACSD team is involved in writing blogs and contributing to our social media!

Morgan, accepting the Storyteller Award from KAB staffer Mike Rosen, who was celebrating his 3rd day on the job!
Morgan, accepting the Storyteller Award from KAB staffer Mike Rosen, who was celebrating his 3rd day on the job!

The most exciting part of last night was the final awards category, the National Affiliate Awards. ILACSD was honored to receive First Place and awarded “Affiliate of the Year”. The plaque might not fit in our suitcases, but it will make it back to San Diego eventually! This award is truly an honor, since ILACSD has been an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful since the 1970’s. In fact, at breakfast today a man came up to me and told me how proud I should be to be part of I Love A  Clean San Diego because we were (and still are) a pioneer in the environmental movement! Back in the 1970’s, there were less than 50 KAB affiliates nationally, and we were the only one in California. Now there are more than 600 affiliates, and although I am biased, I have to say that we are one of the best!

So cheers from Washington, DC and thanks to all of our supporters for being part of our success!

KAB_pic4

Now it’s time for a nap…this three hour time difference is killer when the conference starts at 8am local time!

 

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!

ILACSD- Winning First place for Keeping San Diego Beautiful!

The Keep America Beautiful Clean Community Systems was introduced in San Diego in 1977. The City Council and current Mayor Pete Wilson kabgave the green light for the organization to officially become an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, and the name I Love A Clean San Diego was born. First as the program slogan, then eventually as our organization’s name! We are proud of our work with Keep America Beautiful (KAB).  This week, some of our staff are at the KAB conference to learn more.  Here’s how ILACSD has been keeping San Diego clean (and beautiful) and, we have to brag a bit, a few cool programs of ours that have been nationally recognized by KAB:

-For 2013, we won the KAB Innovation Award! To further educate San Diegans about the importance of waste reduction and pollution prevention,we launched a Bring Your Own Reusables campaign, encouraging volunteers to switch from disposable plastic bags and gloves, and single-use water bottles to a more sustainable alternative when volunteering.  Approximately 70% of volunteers (5,000+ out of over 7,000 participants) brought at least one reusable item to our largest volunteer event of the year, Coastal Cleanup Day.

Here we are accepting the award!
Here we are accepting the award!

-Cigarette Litter Prevention Program: I Love A Clean San Diego receives grant funding each year from Keep America Beautiful to combat the large cigarette butt litter issue facing local beaches, neighborhoods, and outdoor areas. ILACSD partners with the Surfrider Foundation San Diego Chapter to install permanent ashcans throughout San Diego County, and has launched programs in beach area communities including La Jolla, Oceanside, and Point Loma, and recently expanded the program inland in 2012 to include North Park, Mission Hills, and La Mesa. The successful program has an average 55% decrease in cigarette butt litter, proving that smokers can make the right disposal choice when proper infrastructure is available.

Butts in here!
Butts in here!

–Creek to Bay: This cleanup is part of what KAB calls the “Great American Cleanup”.  ILACSD’s signature event, the Creek to Bay Cleanup, represents one of the largest environmental events of the year. Since the inception of this event in 2003, 44,528 volunteers have participated in this effort – resulting in the removal of 1.65 million pounds of debris from San Diego County locations. The mission of the event is to engage the community in removing debris from San Diego’s beaches, canyons, waterways, and parks. The 12th Annual Creek to Bay Cleanup is coming soon on April 26, hope to see you there!

c2b14_patch

-Last year, ILACSD was awarded 1st place for our Cigarette Litter Prevention Program

We’re looking forward to many great years ahead working with KAB! Got ideas for other innovative ways we can encourage conservation and protection of resources? Let us know in the comments!

Test Your Recycling Trivia!

Today’s blog post comes from our Development and Marketing Coordinator, Anna Fadem. Anna is currently in school and wants to make other people take tests…servlet

We know you want to keep America beautiful. Hey, so do we!  Luckily, we here at I Love A Clean San Diego are an affiliate of a national organization called… Keep America Beautiful!  We have adopted two of KAB’s programs and do them locally – the cigarette litter prevention program (which has decreased those butts by 55%) and America Recycles Day.  Keep America Beautiful recently released some really interesting information on how much Americans recycle and how we can up these rates.  Your recycled items can be turned into all sorts of cool stuff:

  • Recycled steel cans can become a bicycle
  • Recycled plastic milk bottles can become an outdoor bench
  • Recycled plastic water bottles can become a pair of blue jeans
  • A cereal box can become a board game (Life cereal=Life board game?)
  • Aluminum cans can become new aluminum cans endlessly and are infinitely recyclable!

    A milk bottle can be recycled into a park bench (cat not included)
    A milk bottle can be recycled into a park bench (cat not included)

KAB provided us with some good statistics on recycling.  So let’s get your recycling trivia up to snuff! School’s out, but here’s a fun quiz where everyone gets an A (because I Love A Clean San Diego loves its readers! And because the answers are at the end of this post).

Ready Set… Go!

1. How much trash does the average American generate per day?
a. 1.3 llbs
b. 2.7 lbs
c. 4.4 lbs
2. How much of that trash is recycled or composted?
a. 0.4 lbs
b. 1.5 lbs
c. 2.1 lbs
3. How much trash does the US produce each year?
a. 57 million tons
b. 176 million tons
c. 250 million tons
4. What percentage of Americans say they are “avid recyclers” (our favorite kind!)
a. 18%
b. 38%
c. 59%
5. Why do Americans say they don’t recycle as much as they should?
a. Lack of access
b. Convenience
c. Awareness/education
d. All of the above
6. So what can we do to get the message out there?
a. Mobilize individual ownership
b. Inspire an emotional connection
c. Learn what you can recycle at WasteFreeSD.org
d. Check out this really funny (really, our staff LOVES this video) PSA from KAB
e. All of the above

Let’s see how ya did! Answers:  c, b, c, b, d, d

download

We appreciate you for all the work you do to keep American beautiful!  For more tips on what you can recycle and where, check out WasteFreeSD.org.