San Diego State Associated Students and the Enviro-Business Society’s GreenFest initiative, a yearlong series of events for students celebrating sustainability, diversity and SDSU pride, has teamed up with I Love A Clean San Diego to host beach cleanups this year.
The first beach clean up was at Tourmaline Beach in Pacific Beach on Sep. 17 which was Coastal Cleanup Day.
GreenFest chair and marketing junior Linda Dawood initiated the start of the beach cleanups.
“My whole idea for celebrating Coastal Cleanup Day was for everybody to come together, clean up a beach and feel like they are at home since people across the globe were also cleaning up a coast that same day,” Dawood said.
Dawood said she saw that GreenFest needed to take more action in the community.
She said since the turnout for the first beach cleanup was so successful, with about 30 to 40 participants, GreenFest decided to make the cleanups a monthly event.
The second beach clean up was on Sunday Oct. 23 at the same beach where they were able to pick up over 16 pounds of both trash and recycling.
“There was a surf competition happening at the beach while we were there,” business marketing freshman Katie Weldon said. “The families saw us with bags and thanked us. Some were even prompted to come help out with the beach cleanup.”
Weldon said it was really cool that they were able to involve the community like that.
Dawood reached out to I Love A Clean San Diego because of their Adopt-A-Beach program in hopes to “adopt” Pacific Beach after their third cleanup. She chose the area because it is the closest and most convenient beach for a lot of SDSU students.
“Partnering up with I Love A Clean San Diego was awesome because they provided us with all the supplies we needed and helped us figure out what location needs the most cleaning,” Dawood said.
Journalism public relations junior Shannon Sneade said the organization’s main goal is to provide people with more awareness of how much trash is really going into the ocean and the effect it can have if people do not help to pick it up.
“I think it’s important to make as many people aware of the bigger problem as possible so they feel more inclined to join in,” Sneade said.
GreenFest reached out to students through posters around campus, social media and word of mouth.
Students from multiple organizations on campus have attended the cleanups.
“I thought it was a lot of fun,” business sophomore Jeremy Harris said. “There were a lot of other organizations there as well so I was able to connect with a bunch of other students.”
The next beach clean up will be held on Saturday Nov. 12 at the same time and place. Students can sign up to volunteer on the GreenFest website.
“It was a really good way to start off my Saturday,” Harris said. “I’m not usually up early on the weekends but the beach cleanup got me up and it felt really good to help out the community.”
