On Sunday September 14, 2008 - CSUF and UCR PBL participated in the Heal the Bay program Santa Monica Beach! Early in the morning we set out to clean the beach and help the environment. It was surprising to find so many cigarette butts , glass bottles and plastic! . In the 2 hrs that we volunteered, my team and I found over 65 cigarette butts, and 20+ glass pieces!! Other teams found more!
We were amazed that we found so much glass in the sand. In one instance, Michelle found a big piece of glass sticking out from the sand , and when we started digging further we kept finding more and more glass. We spent about 10 minutes in that spot digging up all the big and tiny pieces of glass. That glass could have cut someone on the beach!I was surprised by the severeness of the problem and saddened that all of that goes into the ocean and possibly hurt marine life.
Oher items that we found ranged from food wrappers to bottle caps and even clothes. I am happy that in a small way PBL was able to make a difference. Its satisfying to know that we might have saved a little kid from cutting his foot with glass in the sand, or toxic cigarettes going into the Ocean.
After the clean up- we all ate at Bucca Di Beppo and enjoyed the Santa Monica Pier. Michelle, Diana, Victor, Yari and myself even rode the Ferris wheel!
Thanks again to all the volunteers to came out and helped out to Heal The Bay.
Jackie Perez
President
