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=I Love A Clean San Diego=

I Love A Clean San Diego (ILACSD) is a nonprofit organization that encourages a life-time of environmental awareness through innovative education programs, extensive volunteer participation, and constant community engagement. ILACSD works to promote regional awareness of environmental issues including waste reduction, resource conservation, recycling, and pollution prevention.

Organization Profile
I Love A Clean San Diego (ILACSD) offers a broad range of expertise in environmental education program design and implementation. ILACSD works to promote regional awareness of environmental issues including resource conservation, waste reduction and recycling, community enhancement, and pollution prevention. ILACSD is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Since 1954, ILACSD has provided San Diego residents with solutions to the many environmental challenges facing our community. They have provided tools to enhance the quality of life in San Diego by enabling its citizens to care for the natural environment. ILACSD boasts the largest number of volunteers of any environmental nonprofit in the region, with 28,500 San Diegans participating in volunteer events in 2011. ILACSD is unique due to is countywide focus, apolitical approach, and emphasis on inland communities. It’s one of the only community-based environmental organizations dedicated to the future of the entire county – from inland to the coast - in every community - for generations to come.

Countywide Cleanups
Countywide Cleanups are an important part of preserving the quality of life here in San Diego. In addition to smaller monthly cleanups, ILACSD coordinates two large countywide cleanup events each year; the Creek to Bay Cleanup occurs in April, and Coastal Cleanup Day occurs each September. These events give San Diego residents opportunities to volunteer and gain a better sense of how debris negatively impacts our local environment. Volunteers see first-hand how trash makes its way from inland communities all the way to the coast through San Diego County's vast watershed system.

High School Watershed Education Programs
The waterways in San Diego County have a long history of chemical and bacterial contamination from urban runoff and industrial activities. ILACSD’s high school watershed education program is designed to increase students’ knowledge of watersheds and promote behaviors that prevent storm water pollution. Educators help students identify everyday actions they can take to keep their local waterways healthy and encourage community service as a solution to some of our pollution problems. Through pre and post testing, we’ve found that 40% of students increased their knowledge and behavioral intentions after our presentations.

WastFreeSD.org
ILACSD’s one-stop recycling resource, WasteFreeSD.org, provides San Diego residents with information on recycling and proper disposal of hazardous items, diverting countless amounts of waste from San Diego’s landfills and helps to prevent illegal dumping in our communities. Complimented by ILACSD’s bilingual call center, this online resource is able to assist thousands of local residents with their recycling questions each year.

San Diego Clean Beach Coalition
The amazing weather and beautiful beaches of San Diego draw hundreds of thousands of locals and visitors to our shores each summer, especially during holiday weekends. Unfortunately, many of those people leave a trail of trash behind them, polluting our beaches and the ocean. I Love A Clean San Diego is a member of the Clean Beach Coalition, a collaboration of local non-profit organizations and city agencies focused on raising awareness of beach litter issues. The Clean Beach Coalition places temporary trash and recycling bins on the sand in popular local beaches before the Independence Day and Labor Day holidays each year. They encourage individuals to be aware of, and reduce the amount of waste they produce while enjoying the beautiful coastline. While the Coalition’s primary focus is on preventing littering, it also supports the annual “Morning After Mess” cleanup on July 5th.

Nearby Nature
We conduct a variety of outreach programs to educate elementary, middle, and high school youths in San Diego about properly conserving our local environment. This helps them develope good habits at a young age - habits that become part of daily life and ultimately result in a healthier, more vibrant San Diego for future generations. Students are given the opportunity to connect what they learn in the classroom to what they experience in the real world through our nearby nature field trips. Educators lead students on walking field trips to their nearest “nature” area, providing guided hikes and standards-based outdoor learning activities.

Adopt-A-Beach Program
I Love A Clean San Diego is the San Diego County coordinator for the Adopt-A-Beach program, a statewide beach cleanup program aimed at curbing marine debris. The San Diego portion of the program is one of the largest and most developed programs statewide. It includes a website allowing volunteers to find out about the program specifics and register for the program online. ILACSD has also developed a signage program to recognize adopters at over 60 beach locations countywide.

Recently, the San Diego County Adopt-A-Beach program was expanded to include 10 inland sites, the only program in the state to do so. Through this program, ILACSD delivers 25 presentations each year to first time adopters, educating them on the effects of marine debris. In total, over 5,000 volunteers are involved in the Adopt-A-Beach program each year in San Diego County.

Stormwater Outreach Education Program
I Love A Clean San Diego has a partnership with Think Blue, the City of San Diego’s stormdrain pollution prevention campaign. Together they work to educate the public about stormdrain pollution in several ways. They conducting 60 presentations a year to San Diego high school students, teaching them about the negative impacts stormdrain pollution has on their environment and their health, identifying ways to prevent this problem. They also develope several initiatives reaching out to San Diego’s Spanish speaking population regarding stormdrain pollution. This includes identifying and attending large scale events aimed at the Latino community such as the Latino Film Festival, etc.

Together ILACSD and Think Blue also manage a stormdrain stenciling initiative, stenciling storm drains and handing out supplies to individuals and companies who want to stencil anti-dumping messages near stormdrains in their communities. They have created an educational video instructing residents about the proper way to stencil these messages, and already over 1,600 stormdrains have been stenciled through this program. There is a continual effort to expand stenceling, and ILACSD and Think Blue attend various community events to pass out information regarding stormdrain pollution and engage with the public about this serious issue.

History
Founded as the San Diego War Against Litter Committee in 1954, I Love A Clean San Diego celebrates 57 years of promoting environmental education and awareness in San Diego County. In the 1970s "I Love A Clean San Diego" was the slogan for the organization's anti-litter campaign and in 1980 it became the organization's name. In 1989, ILACSD merged with the San Diego Ecology Center, joining two leading environmental organizations together to better serve the community, under one name.

1950s

 * 1954 Growth had surged in the two prior decades, fueled by the aviation industry during WWII. As the community grew in San Diego County, litter emerged as a pressing problem. The County and City responded with the "War Against Litter" Committee, ILACSD's first incarnation.

1960s

 * 1960 By the end of the year 1960, a full-fledged “War Against Litter” campaign had been launched, and there were plans to kick off the new year right.  In December of 1960 an official resolution proclaiming the coming week of January 14, 1961 as “War Against Litter Week” and the year of 1961 as “War Against Litter Year” had been passed and adopted by the Board of Supervisors of the County of San Diego.


 * 1961 The organization's first mascot, Pelican Pete, was unveiled in 1961. Later that year a downtown parade of dignitaries, boy scouts, and military personnel kicked off the "War Against Litter Week."

1970s

 * 1970 Board members and staff developed a new slogan "Stop Littering Our Bays and Beaches" or SLOBB for short to drive the anti-litter message home with beach and bay goers. The SLOBB campaign won numerous awards and even spawned a Miss SLOBB pageant.


 * 1974 I Love A Clean San Diego County" (ILACSDC) becomes organization's name. ILACSD becomes a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit corporation.

1980s

 * 1984 The Padres went all the way to the World Series, and ILACSDC was there to help celebrate. Recycling bins were placed around the then named Jack Murphy Stadium to divert waste from tailgate parties, after all "a winning team deserves a clean city!"


 * 1989 ILACSDC merges with San Diego Ecology Center to better serve the community.

1990s

 * 1990s Extending the success of the Adopt-A-Beach program, ILACSDC launched the "Adopt and maintain a bus stop bench" program to cleanup city streets and make public transportation more attractive to residents.


 * 1995 Name change from I Love A Clean San Diego County to I Love A Clean San Diego. ILACSD received the Excellence in Solid Waste Education award from the Solid Waste Association of North America.

2000s

 * 2003 ILACSD took a page out of the history books, organizing a large-scale, countywide cleanup during Earth month. The resulting Creek to Bay cleanup was a resounding success with almost 2,000 volunteers removing 25,000 pounds of debris.


 * 2006 Annually, ILACSD coordinates over 13,000 volunteers to remove 100 tons of trash and debris from San Diego, delivers 250 presentations and community events.


 * 2007 I Love A Clean San Diego was awarded with a proclamation from the City of Chula Vista recognizing our coordination of the annual Beautify Chula Vista Day. The event boasted close to 1,000 volunteers and was the most successful in history. As a Keep America Beautiful affiliate, ILACSD received the President’s Circle Recognition Award for achieving all standards of excellence as an affiliate.


 * 2008 ILACSD has recently been recognized through proclamations by the County Board of Supervisors for its work conducting Electronic Recycling events, as well as the City of Chula Vista for coordination of the annual volunteer event, Beautify Chula Vista Day. Recent initiatives have included the creation of the San Diego Clean Beach Coalition to address litter issues facing local beaches over popular summer holidays, as well as outreach campaigns educating San Diego residents about the proper disposal of needles, syringes, and other sharps.


 * 2009 Nearly 21,000 requests for waste items made to our one-stop recycling resource, www.wastefreesd.org. This valuable resource diverted immeasurable waste from San Diego's already over extended landfills, and prevented incidences of illegal dumping that contaminates our community.

2010s

 * 2010 On 2010's Coastal Cleanup Day, volunteers of all ages lent their support at the first ever inland kick-off media site at Rose Creek! Plus, as ILACSD's staff grews they needed more space. ILACSD calls Point Loma's Liberty Station Home. Also, after receiving a proclamation from the County Board of Supervisors, ILACSD helped give away 30,000+ reusable bags in just two hours for the first "Day Without a Bag."


 * 2012 On September 15th of 2012,  I Love A Clean San Diego headed up the 28th annual Coastal Cleanup Day. I Love A Clean San Diego had been co-coordinating Coastal Cleanup Day in San Diego for 10 years, but this year took on the event as the sole coordinator making ILACSD the go-to organization for countywide cleanup events. This year’s Coastal Cleanup Day event had astounding turnouts, seeing over 7,200 volunteers collect over 121,000 lbs. of waste across 88 different cleanup sites in San Diego County.