Public Works Gives Back to the Community
Author: Public Works
Date: 3/23/2019 12:00 AM
Despite the cold and rain, on March 23, over fifty of our staff and their family members participated in the Department’s first annual family beach cleanup held at Cayucos Pier!
The event was organized through the Work/Life Balance Team in conjunction with the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo’s (ECOSLO) Beach Keepers program. ECOSLO provided cleanup materials such as buckets, grabbers, sorting bins, and data sheets to keep track of what was picked up off the beach. Our families certainly found a lot of trash – from cigarette butts to plastic straws and old crab traps to a giant tractor tire that gave some children hours of exercise as they tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to extract it. Despite it raining, everyone had a smile on their face and was more than willing to dig around through beach debris to remove trash from the beach. We can proudly say we collected 180 pounds of trash from the beach! The top five items our families collected were:
- #1: Foam Pieces - 375
- #2: Cigarette Butts - 247
- #3: Plastic Pieces - 207
- #4: Food Wrappers - 90
- #5: Straws/Stirrers - 72
Cayucos Pier was the perfect location for our first cleanup, as a couple of years ago the County finished a major two-phase project to stabilize and then replace wood pilings of the pier. The Cayucos community was so appreciative of the County’s beach cleanup efforts that local businesses showed their gratitude via donations and discounts. After the hard work was completed, the sun showed up and participants were treated to goodies donated by Brown Butter Cookies and discounts on meals from Honey Girl Café, Ruddells Smokehouse, Schooners, and Martin’s.
It was a great day giving back to the community and teaching our families about trash in our oceans. We can’t wait to see you at the next beach cleanup in South County!
