Thank You Thursday 9-25-14

Wow, what a week! The list of organizations and businesses to thank is massive. But first, some massive numbers to illustrate how we couldn’t have pulled it off without you.

• Coastal Cleanup Day (Sept. 20th) brought out 11,155 volunteers picking up 30,480 pounds of trash at 49 locations around L.A. County stretching over nearly 43 miles!
• Coastal Cleanup Education Day (Sep. 17th) brought 700 children from 10 schools in underserved communities to the beach to play marine conservation-themed games, clean the beach (filling our nine-foot “butt-o-meter” to the brim with nasty cigarette butts) and to tour our Santa Monica Pier Aquarium.

Thanks so much to our South Bay aquaria partners SEA Lab and Cabrillo Aquarium, and to Mattel, Inc.’s volunteers. All helped wrangle – and educate – those 700 kids on Coastal Cleanup Education Day.

Toyota was a Patron Sponsor of Coastal Cleanup Day and Rubio’s donated meal cards for volunteers at all 49 cleanup sites. Picking up trash was accomplished with a minimum of plastic bags, thanks to Simplehuman’s donation of thousands of reusable buckets made of recycled trash. Rusty’s Surf Ranch quenched everyone’s thirst from the Santa Monica Pier site, providing a free beer to everyone 21 and over who cleaned the beach, along with discount lunch tickets. And a shout out to Scott Hubbell and Anheuser Busch for their part in sponsoring the partnership with Rusty’s as well.

 We’re also so grateful to Union Bank, Ralphs/Food4Less, The Vons Foundation, Kaiser Permanente and Darden, who contributed to the success of Coastal Cleanup Day, 2014.