90 pounds of trash, equivalent to almost three thousand empty soda cans, were taken from Avila Beach Saturday morning during the 20th annual Creeks to Coast Cleanup across San Luis Obispo County.
Among the litter, plastic bottle caps and cigarette butts were the most common pieces.
One volunteer cleaning up Avila Beach was Kimberly Shinmoto, who tells me it’s a tradition to bring her kids to Avila Beach.
“I've been an environmentalist for years now,” Shinmoto said. “I think it's super important that we all do our part and this is a beautiful place, and I want to help keep it beautiful.”
Allison Wong is visiting from out of town. She participated in cleaning up the local community. She tells me they understand what it’s like to see litter in a beautiful spot.
“We live near beaches, too,” Wong said. “And there's always stuff to be picked up. Even we found, you know, like parts of the plastic bags. So even if it's not trash that just got left, it's the pieces that we can all just stick little bits up.
Hosted by ECO SLO, the Creeks to Coast Cleanup is run in different parts of the county by site captains. In Avila Beach, the Central Coast Aquarium helped manage over 60 volunteers across the Bob Jones Trail and coastline.
Lexi Mitchell is the volunteer coordinator for the Central Coast Aquarium.
“It's really heartwarming, and it gives you a sense of relief that other people really care about the community and trash that's going into the ocean, because it affects more than just you, and it affects everybody and everything,” Mitchell said.
Volunteers are encouraged to fill out a sheet documenting what kinds of litter they find for ECO SLO. The organization will then tally the results for the public.
“My assumption or hope is that it drives accountability, that, you know, by being aware of what is the common litter that you might find out here that we can drive awareness for how to prevent that,” Shinmoto said.
