The 18th annual California Coastal Cleanup Day was held Saturday, September 21,
from 9:00 a.m. - noon. The Santa Monica Rotarian location was once again at
Will Rogers State Beach, at the end of Temescal. Our Rotary members
and Rotaract members helped "Heal the Bay"
break its goal of bringing out more than 10,000 volunteers to tackle the
problem of marine debris.
"Heal the Bay" provided all volunteers with trash bags, recycle bags,
gloves, and instructions on how to conduct a safe cleanup. Coastal Cleanup Day
was a wonderful opportunity to remove tens of thousands of pounds of trash
from area beaches, educate the public about beach pollution, and show that
Rotary cares.
I saw first hand the effects of Styrofoam containers, lets just say that one Styrofoam container equates to one million broken pieces. As you can imagine, not much fun to pick up There were also cigarette butts buried deep in the sand and plastic beverage wrappers (non degradable) everywhere. I asked a spokesperson from "Heal the Bay", "Why do we need to pick up trash, when there are automated machines that appear to do the job just fine?" She told me that these machines get most of the large stuff, but the small pieces of plastic are not picked up. She told me that they need these events because, "This is the only time during the year that the beaches get a full cleaning."
Overall, I believe this was a great event and well worth the effort put forth. The spokesperson from "Heal the Bay" thanked the Rotary Club of Santa Monica for participating.
We had a great time helping our community as the pictures show below. Don't forget to click on the small picture to see the full size version.
| A big thank you goes out to Chairman Tim Shannon and Vice Chair and new member Brian West (Shown right). Brian is Captain of the Santa Monica Chapter of the Salvation Army. I wish that I could have gotten a picture of Brian in his civilian outfit. He did a great job the day of the event providing coffee, donuts, supervising, picking up trash, and providing encouragement to all of those in attendance! |
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Dick and Char Lawrence. Dick loves this event, I believe that him and his wife have helped at every event so far! |
| Steve Alexis shown with volunteers from the Rotaract Club of Santa Monica College. Steve tells me that at the official weighing in ceremony, his group was recorded as having picked up over 24 lbs. of trash! |
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Shown starting left - Larry Maher Jr., Kym Maher, Brenda and Larry Maher. The wives are shown, just prior to beach cleanup, applying sunscreen lotion to protect their "helpless" husbands from those nasty UV Rays. |
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Eric Schmitter picks up trash (or is that a feather?) with surgical precision! |
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Larry Maher claims that he picked up over 5,000 pieces of Styrofoam, plastic straws, and cigarette butts! |
