Earth Day gives Coastside community common purpose

As it has for many years, the Pacific Beach Coalition will celebrate Earth Day by organizing beach cleanups and gathering at Linda Mar Beach. This year, the Earth Day of Action is Saturday, April 22.

The day will start at 9 a.m., when people show up with gloves and buckets to official cleanup locations at 14 beaches from Thornton Vista in Daly City south to Pillar Point Harbor in Princeton, and even on the bay at Foster City. Adams expects 1,000 to 1,500 people to join the event.

If people can’t make it to the official sites, they’re encouraged to adopt a site that needs cleaning and recruit friends, family or neighbors to help pick up. Groups can register their sites and report the results to have them added to the official tally.

When the coalition started doing beach cleanups in 2006, participants would fill a dumpster full of trash and another one almost full of recyclable materials. Now the group doesn’t even bring in dumpsters because the volume of trash is so reduced. That’s due to monthly scheduled cleanups at Pacifica beaches, says Adams, but more so to the change in attitudes over that time.

“People are littering less, and picking up trash whenever they go to the beach,” she says. The coalition hopes that raising awareness of plastic pollution on the beach and in the ocean will create a community of people who say, “Hold on, I don’t want that,” and will support legislation to reduce plastic usage.

After the cleanup, participants are invited to gather at Linda Mar Beach from 10:30 a.m. to noon for a low-key celebration that will include activities, informational booths and speakers, among them Kate Huckelbridge, the new executive director of the Coastal Commission.

This year’s “Earth Honoree” mascot is the nudibranch, or sea slug. These small but often fanciful ocean creatures will be featured in games, talks and art-making at the celebration.