Organize and participate in a community clean-up day.

“There, I got to experience the true fun of creek cleanups: removing shopping carts, microwaves, stoves, and all sorts of other interesting finds with an enthusiastic group. The thing that was more important than just removing the trash though was the fact that I was able to witness the way we were able to transform the area and experience the satisfaction that we were able to make an impact. I remember at the end of that cleanup, I watched two of the other volunteers using a grappling hook to pull a stroller and a couple other items out of the creek. I remember thinking how fun and exciting it looked, but I realized that I wasn’t old enough to help.”

“Since it happened during COVID-19, KCCB followed Santa Clara County health regulations and procedures by asking us follow-up questions about any symptoms, checking our temperature, maintaining 6-feet apart from one another unless they were from the same household, going over what our goal was for the day and gave us our own safety gloves, trash picker, and a trash bag. [...] One of the experiences that I found devastating was how garbage ends up in the creeks and gets stuck between rocks and sticks. It is challenging to remove because they get buried deep in the dirt throughout time, making it difficult to find these or remove them. Watching documentaries on plastic or waste pollution is an entirely different experience than seeing it in person. It is a life-changing experience; it wakes you up and makes you realize that this issue is more significant than it seems.”

“My husband and I led a community cleanup in our neighborhood and thought it'd be fun to share how the experience went. We used Next Door and Facebook to let people within our neighborhood know about the event. We provided trash bags, gloves, hand sanitizer, etc. for everyone who came to help. We've found this has been a really nice way to connect with people during the pandemic and bonus points for helping the planet! We led one of these cleanups in January and picked up 20 bags of trash (those big contractor sized bags) and this time we got 14 bags.”