Hundreds of volunteers around the bay show up for 40th Coastal Cleanup Day
BERKELEY - Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of California Coastal Cleanup Day which has become a yearly ritual for a lot of people.
As we learn more about how the planet functions, it's becoming clear that what's happening on the land is directly impacting the health of the oceans. Saturday, on both sides of the bay, volunteers were casting a wide net to find even the tiniest pieces of trash.
Berkeley has been hosting a coastal cleanup event for more than 30 years and, on Saturday, nearly 500 showed up to help out.
"It's that one day a year that people collectively come together to really kind of help out and pick things up off of our shoreline," said organizer Sammi Orth.
A group of young friends from Berkeley and 7-year-old Vivian had no trouble finding stuff to pick up.
"Here's trash!" Vivian said as she pulled a plastic wrapper from some rocks along the shore. "I was surprised there was this much trash," she added. "It was a lot of trash. We got this bucket full and that bucket full."
It was a lot for one group of kids to find and it's got them a bit worried.
"There's animals out there who are also in the trash area and that's kind of like their house," said 10-year-old Amelia. "It's like when my mom's going around the house and she's going, 'Why is there so much trash everwhere?' And that's probably what the animals feel like."
Nine-year-old Autumn said she jumped at the chance to do some cleanup because it was fun and she loved the earth. "And apparently we're supposed to be the generation that's supposedly going to have to save the earth. So, yeah, I have to do my part!" she said.
That's a lot of pressure to put on a 9-year-old but that is the earth the grownups are leaving them. Autumn said it makes her mad when she sees what people leave on the ground.
"They're eating lunch and they're just like, 'Oh I have a tiny little bit of trash I left on the ground. Oh, whatever, it's just like that big.' We found like eight pieces that are that big!" she said.
At Ocean Beach in San Francisco, about 200 people showed up and organizers said many of their volunteers are coming back year after year.
"Hopefully getting people building that habit to keep coming out because the trash, the litter, keeps coming back," said Vince Yuen, director of a group called Refuse Refuse. "But as long as we keep coming back we can prevent a lot of it from polluting the environment."
The biggest concern, of course, is plastic waste. Even the smallest pieces are a danger as they break up and become tiny bits that sea life consume as food. Most of the litter on the beach and in the rocks wasn't necessarily dumped at the coast. It comes from inland neighborhoods, washed down in storm drains when it rains. Back in Berkeley, Pete Guinosso said he organizes trash pickups four times a year in his neighborhood just to keep it from getting into the bay.
"There's a beautiful quote that says 'If everybody would sweep their front porch the whole world would be clean,'" Guinosso said. "So this work that we're doing here is sweeping our front porch, you know, in a broader sense. We're trying to help the environment by taking care of our front porch."
At Berkeley, Coastal Cleanup Day is also a research project. Volunteers fill out cards documenting exactly what they found and each trash bag is weighed before it's tossed into a large dumpster. At Saturday's cleanup, Berkeley reports that it collected more than 1,000 pounds of refuse from a 3-mile stretch of shoreline. That information is forwarded to the California Coastal Commission to help build a case for more stringent policies regarding single-use plastics as the state works to get its house - and front porch - in order.
