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Adopt-a-Beach Program The Adopt-a-Beach effort is underway!
The Bay environment
improved a little bit on July 15, when I and 4 dedicated
volunteers picked up litter on a quarter-mile stretch of shoreline
at Robert's Landing in San Leandro. Was the event a success? I use my personal yardstick to measure--as we gathered in the San Leandro Marina parking lot at 9 AM that day, I was chiding myself for not doing better publicity and getting a higher turnout. Tim Christopher, the can-do adopt-a-beach coordinator for the City of San Leandro, tried to cheer me up as he drove the 5 of us out to the stretch of beach that "belongs" to the LBNL Green Team. He was glad to see everyone, and told me 5 people was a good number. The beach is a thin strip of sand and a few grassy dunes that lies between a restored wetland and a band of sticky black mud that is exposed at low tide. Tim briefed us on the strategy of litter collection (separate recyclables, don't venture into the mud), and handed us our bags. I was surprised at what happened next--as I bent over to pick up my first piece of trash, my outlook suddenly changed. I thought, "I'm doing it! I am cleaning up the beach!" I had experienced a year of discussion of the merits of small-scale community action, but this was actually the action, the doing. It was refreshing. In about three hours, the five of us picked up about 2 or 3 cubic yards of trash. We were happy with the amount we were able to accomplish. The action was small, but its lesson to me was significant--there is no substitute for the experience of taking action. It turned out the way Tim C. had said it would: anything we were able to do was a good thing. And it was! The next beach cleanup "experience" will take place September 22, which is California Coastal Cleanup day. All along the coast of California, volunteers will be cleaning up the beach that day. I hope some of you will join us at Robert's Landing. Thanks again to those who helped on July 15! 
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