Small Business Saturday Beach Cleanup

This year was our first time participating in Small Business Saturday and we scheduled a pop-up alongside other local San Diego businesses at Culture Brewing Co in Ocean Beach. Since the brewery is right up the street from Ocean Beach Pier, we decided to make a day of it and organize a beach cleanup beforehand.

Through I Love A Clean San Diego's Adopt-A-Beach program, we reserved Zero Waste cleanup supplies including buckets, grabbers and reusable gloves. Some volunteers even brought their own gloves and reusable bags from home. In total we had 20 incredible volunteers come out to clean up our beach and together we gathered almost 10lbs of trash! 

Each group recorded what kind of trash they found so that we can better understand where all the waste is coming from. Here's what we found:

• 280 small pieces of styrofoam
• 78 small plastic pieces
• 68 cigarette butts 
• 37 plastic bottle caps
• 32 assorted paper pieces
• 31 food wrappers
• 22 straws/stirrers
• 12 pieces of fishing line, lures, floats
• 11 plastic bags
• 11 plastic cups, lids, plates, utensils 
• 8 metal bottle caps/can pulls
• 7 balloons/ribbons/confetti
• 5 cigarette boxes
• 5 styrofoam food containers/cups/plates
• 4 plastic bottles
• 3 glow sticks
• 3 pieces of rope
• 3 plastic toys
• 2 beverage cans
• 1 wine cork
• 1 knife handle
• 1 disposable lighter
• 1 syringe 
• 1 glass bottle
• 1 zip tie 
• 1 fishing hook
• 1 piece of pallet/wood

Altogether this totaled to 9.5lbs of trash picked up in 1.5 hours! We had a lot of support from the local community, as people stopped by to participate or just to thank our group for helping out. After the beach cleanup, we walked up to Culture Brewing Co to enjoy some cold beers and shop local vendors: Hoppy Beer Hoppy Life, Happy Days Art and, of course, Santos Swim. A big thank you to everyone who participated!