California Coastal Cleanup 2008

I went to the event on Ocean beach this Saturday. Was surprised that the weather there was really bad - it was misty and slightly raining most of the time. That did not keep the people from coming however, and there was quite a crowd of volunteers willing to help clean up the beach. I took a lot of pictures with people working, doing yoga (before the event in the sand and while it was raining), birds... Met George Su there, who was also taking pictures.

Saw that a lot of the people there were from schools, I'd say about 85% of them. Not a lot of individuals come to this. There were families though or people with their dogs. That made me realize that the audience I will concentrate on reaching is not going to be high-schoolers (because they already are coming - the schools are "making them" come), it is going to be regular working people.

I asked people what was the reason they came to help out and mostly everyone said that they just wanted to help out in keeping the beaches clean.
A lot of the individual people I met had been coming for a lot of years and this was an every-year kind of thing for them. One woman said that she always wanted to come and finally found the time to do it.

I think that one reason that a lot of people are not participating is this event is that they don't want to go alone. And if everyone in a yoga group, a book club or .... decided to come, people would show up and have a lot more fun collectively helping out. So getting groups, not individuals involved is one way to get people more interested.
Than there are the pet owners. - I saw a few people with a leash in one hand and a garbage bag in another which did seem like a good team for tackling the job.