Coastal Cleanup at the Berkeley Aquatic Park
Sep 2006 - EarthTeam's official restoration kick-off for this school year

I stepped out of my car and walked on the muddy, wet ground as I watched a yellow school bus pull into the meeting area. A stream of smiling students came out of the bus dressed in sweats and chatting with other, all waiting a busy day cleaning up the litter at Berkeley Aquatic Park. I looked around at all the teachers and volunteers and slowly the area filled up with more people as cars drove in. Sitting on a bench with a pen and pad, I could only be amazed by how many kids, teenagers, and adults poured in to help with this cause.

The Coastal Cleanup at Berkeley Aquatic Park, an event that has taken place since 1985, was attended by 150 students coming from Acalanes, Northgate, San Lorenzo, and Berkeley High Schools. This statewide environmental event has made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest organized cleanup, with over 700,000 participants throughout the years.

The huge number of youth volunteers was moving towards adults assign in the coordination of the event. As EarthTeam's executive director Sheilah Fish told me, "It's inspiring, hopeful… there are many environmental challenges and after today we hope young people will take initiative and be propelled to help out." I asked Chicory Bechtel, an EarthTeam volunteer and coordinator directing one of the cleanup groups at the park, what her reaction was to seeing the number of students attending this event. "My reaction is real happiness and joy,"she said. I'm really happy to see all these kids come out to help with the environment."

I asked Linda Bandrowski an AP Bio and Biotech teacher at Northgate High School, what had brought the 60 students attending from her school to this event. "ost kids are here because they care. These kids eralize that if they don't take an active stand now, the world will not be like the world they're living in now." Many students also came as representatives of various environmental clubs, for their community service requirement. Seniors Joe Engada, Jieven Paulo Salta, and Harold Tafur were members of San Lorenzo High's environmental club, an organization which requires students to participate in various cleanups and to plant native plants at their school. Said Engeda, "We want to serve as an example for our school and encourage others to follow." I asked them about what kinds of trash they had found and they looked at each other and chuckled as Salta told me, "We found a lot of things you wouldn't expect; people are really not very discrete about their trash." Allison Cooper, a student from Albany High said, "We've mostly seen little pieces that people think won't add up, but they do." In fact, many students claimed to find car parts, chunks of metal, and one volunteer even found a stuffed monkey that could sing and dance (after one of our EarthTeam reporters took the batters out of his camera to try out the monkey). Many students wee surprised to find out how quickly their garbage bags had filled up. In response to seeing the huge amount of garbage in the park, Roxennea Firouzian, a freshman at Acalanes High School said, "We need to put in more trash cans to keep the park clean. There needs to be more awareness of what's going on."

At the end of the cleanup, students gathered in the meeting area and cheered as they watched every trash bag hauled up to the scale. Over 5000 pieces of trash had been collected in this one morning, an overwhelming amount usually collected in one month of regular cleanup. It had been a productive day for the volunteers, happily munching on Subway sandwiches and chips as they spread out in the meeting area for a social time.

Even though students were happy with the results of their efforts, many felt driven to continue to help with the problem of excessive waste. As Acalanes junior Helen Banach said, "This is such a big problem; even doing a little is doing something."