When is snows it rains, and inevitably when it rains, it drains. Los Angeles has received over 16 inches of rain this season. That rain water is funneled 51 miles from the San Fernando Valley all the way to the Pacific Ocean picking up every piece of debris and garbage along the way. This past Saturday on Venice Beach, the results of this extraordinarily wet Winter were hard to ignore.
The Surfrider Foundation armed volunteers with reusable shopping bags, trash pickers and old gardening gloves and in the span of 3 hours, more than 100 volunteers managed to gather over 180 pounds of trash within a half a mile of the Venice Fishing Pier. Most notably this trash included, 2,782 cigarette butts, 1,976 bottle caps, 790 straws and over 2,000 random pieces of plastic. At about 1:00pm the beach looked happy again.
The efforts paid off and we all rejoiced for a few cold ones from Three Weavers Brewing Company back at Arbor Headquarters on Washington Boulevard. On behalf of The Arbor Collective we would like to thank all the men, women and children that got their hands dirty in the sand of dogtown.
