Thank You Thursday – 12.13.12

Volunteers fuel Heal the Bay’s activities, from scouring the beach for trash at our cleanups to monitoring the progress of the new MPAs, to … stuffing envelopes!

In the spirit of the holidays, we would like to give a shout out to some of our favorite Heal the Bay elves — our lovely Wednesday Office Volunteers.

“Believe it or not, volunteering can be super fun and rewarding,” says Nancy Shrodes, Heal the Bay’s volunteer and outreach coordinator. On a recent Wednesday, our volunteers had quite a project on the table.

Says Nancy: “We had some old vinyl tarps sitting in our storage that were ready for a renovation. These old banners could not be reused in original form any more, so I decided to repurpose the vinyl by making Heal the Bay wallets. After consulting a few YouTube how-to videos, my helpers and I had 60 beautiful handmade vinyl wallets!”

We’d also like to thank Santa Monica High School’s ocean stewardship group Team Marine. On November 16, when the Santa Monica area received a significant amount of rain, Team Marine headed to the Pico Kenter storm drain to collect trash. They removed more than 75 pounds of debris, preventing a small portion from entering the ocean. The team reported that the majority of the trash was plastic.

This marks the fifth consecutive year that Team Marine has documented the flow of pollutants coming out of the storm drain and performed emergency clean ups.

Last Friday, a corporate cleanup team from Yahoo! joined Heal the Bay at Will Rogers State Beach to pick up trash. In addition, Ford Motor Company was there, offering test drives of their Focus Electric and C-MAX Hybrid models. Ford donated to Heal the Bay for each and every participant. Thank you, Ford!

And a big shoutout to our friends at the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA) Environmental Fund.Their unwavering support of Heal the Bay’s Beach Report Card has safeguarded the health of millions of surfers, swimmers and everyday beachgoers.

For those of you who would like to join in on the Wednesday fun, or if you have always wanted to get involved as a volunteer with Heal the Bay and don’t know where to start, email Nancy Shrodes and she’ll get you started.

Interested in building team spirit at your company? Sponsor a Corporate Healer Beach Cleanup.