Keep the Green Going…Recycle that tree!

Tis the season to recycle and I Love A Clean San Diego (ILACSD) is breaking down the post-holiday basics, starting with recycling your Christmas tree. Every December, ILACSD’s Disposal Solution Center provides accurate information for the proper recycling of holiday trees.

Instead of overcrowding local landfills with holiday trees, collected trees can be ground up into high quality mulch or composted and used to enrich soils for next years’ trees and poinsettias! Most waste haulers offer special holiday tree recycling programs to pick up trees with yard waste on regular collection days. In addition to curbside pick-up, tree drop-off sites are located in the communities of Carlsbad, Coronado, El Cajon, Escondido, Imperial Beach, La Mesa, lemon Grove, National City, Ramona, San Diego, San Marcos, Santee, Solana Beach, Vista and Unincorporated County.

Your tree is not the only item you can recycle; wrapping paper, cardboard boxes, packaging peanuts are also accepted for recycling many places. Plus, remember to donate unwanted electronics, clothing, and toys to local charities for reuse.

“I Love A Clean San Diego bridges the gap between residents and recyclers, giving San Diegans the opportunity to make the right choice for the environment”, says Pauline Martinson, ILACSD’s Executive Director.

I Love A Clean San Diego operates San Diego County’s only recycling website and call center which refers thousands of residents to the proper facilities to recycle or dispose of just about anything. From broken surfboards to wine corks, railroad ties to cooking oil, ILACSD’s Disposal Solution Center makes recycling quick and convenient. San Diego County residents can go to: www.wastefreesd.org or call 1-877-R-1-EARTH to learn how to recycle hundreds items.

Holiday Tree Recycling Tips:

• Trees taller than four feet should be cut in half
• All tree stands, nails and tree decorations must be removed
• Check with your local hauler to see if they accept flocked trees

A complete list of tree recycling locations is available through our one-stop recycling database, www.wastefreesd.org or by calling 1-877-R-1-EARTH. Remember to Recycle that Tree!

Day Without A Bag

The Annual Day Without a Bag has come and gone, and the big question is…did you remember to ban single use bags on December 16th? Well, hopefully you did along with thousands of other San Diegans. I Love A Clean San Diego wants to give you a little recap of the impressive successes of the first ever regional Day Without a Bag campaign in San Diego County.

Drumroll please…
Day Without a Bag was a huge success! You might have heard about it on TV, the web, or radio. It was just about everywhere! We even received a proclamation from the County of San Diego recognizing our efforts to encourage San Diegans to live a little bit greener.

A handful of environmental nonprofits in the region teamed up to coordinate a massive reusable bag giveaway stretching from Imperial Beach to Oceanside and Ocean Beach to El Cajon. Together, approximately 230 volunteers from I Love A Clean San Diego, San Diego Coastkeeper, Surfrider Foundation, and the Solana Center for Environmental Innovation gave away more than 30,000 reusable bags on December 16th outside grocery stores and other retail locations. We had lots of help from almost all jurisdictions in San Diego County, namely the cities of Oceanside, Encinitas, Lemon Grove, and Chula Vista. Our friends at Westfield UTC loaned us the use of their mall for our press conference, and even a few bag monsters joined in the fun.

We’re all feeling pretty good that thanks to our efforts, 30,000+ San Diegans have at least one reusable bag to use in place of single use plastic or paper ones. And when you consider that the average San Diegan uses more than 500 plastic bags each year, our efforts could lead to 15 million less bags in our waste stream in the coming year. Hoorray for that! And thanks to all of our volunteers and sponsors who made it all happen.
Save the Date for next years Day Without A Bag event, Thursday December 15th, but remember to live every day without a disposable bag!

ILACSD Heads to Florida

ILACSD’s  Executive Director and Director of Development and Marketing have just returned from traveling across the country to Orlando. But, this was not a holiday vacation, instead of lounging by the pool…it was too cold for that, they attended dozens of seminars to learn how I Love A Clean San Diego can be even more effective in keeping San Diego clean!
I Love A Clean San Diego received a scholarship to attend the annual Keep America Beautiful conference. Many of you probably don’t know that ILACSD is a Keep America Beautiful affiliate, the only one in San Diego and one of only nine in California. Nationwide, there are almost 600 Keep America Beautiful affiliates, and even a few in Canada. What brings us all together this week is our common goal of keeping our communities litter-free!
The two lucky ILACSD senior staff members packed in many hours of training on all sorts of topics from school gardens to the hidden costs of illegal dumping. We are not only learning from the experts who lead the seminars, but also learning from other Keep America Beautiful affiliates about their successful programs.
As one of the keynote speakers mentioned, “people tend to care more about the cleanliness of their ashtrays than the health of their environment” when discussing what motivates people to litter. Isn’t that awful? Well, let me tell you, this coming year we are going to change that! Through a new outreach campaign, LitteringIsWrong, we’ll be confronting litter issues head-on.  Stay tuned for more updates!

I Love A Clean San Diego staff with Keep America Beautiful CEO Matt McKenna