Dockweiler Cleanup

My name is Jonathan Leal and I'm in Hasmik Barsamian’s English 101 course and our English classes were asked to participate in a cleanup of Cal State La’s, Dockweiler Beach on Sunday the 23^rd of October. At first of course everybody was skeptical about it, who wants to give up their weekend to cleanup a smelly beach (JK). I know that a bunch of my class and I were deciding on ways to avoid it but when the day came closer I was actually looking forward to it, I think we all did. With all the focus on the environment being in danger it’s the least we can do. I mean helping pick up some trash on a beach for 2 hours that’s not that bad and it turned out to be fun because we had friends there doing it with us. To begin with we all had to meet up at the beach and I offered to carpool and ended up taking two classmates which I was fine with, helping out the environment after all. We showed up to the beach and to my surprise a bunch of people were there to help, not just my whole class, but a lot more. Then they told us how we could contribute to cleaning up the beach, by picking up styrofoam, plastic, glass, basically anything man made. So my whole class decided we would do this as a large group and we all proceeded down the beach with the bags, chart, and gloves they gave us. At first we were goofing around a little bit but then we started to see a lot of trash in areas some would be decently clean and some just covered in trash. (We called the trash covered spots gold mines or jackpots.) So we ended up making it our duty to get the most tally marks for our charts to turn in. And all of a sudden everyone started yelling out things they were finding. Not one person didn’t participate; everyone was picking up trash and calling out what was found. After about 30 minutes I started writing down on the chart and at first we started very slow a couple of wrappers here and there but then a jackpot would come and the chart started filling up quickly. After about an hour or so we had found a plethora of hazardous materials toward the environment such as plastic rings, plastic pieces, glass, styrofoam, and a large amount of candy wrappers that was probably the most of something that we had found. Even though it was only 2 hours we were all pretty much exhausted and decided to walk back and we were quite a ways from where we initially started. And when we finally got back the teachers explained how much it helped, and if interested, we can volunteer to do it again. We ended up filling up around 3 to 4 bags which isn’t bad. And I have to say even though I missed football and sleep, that I'm glad I instead helped the environment, even if it was in a little way.

Healing the Bay @ Dockweiler Beach

Hello! My name is Brandon Lee and I'm currently attending CSULA and I along with my fellow classmates participated in cleaning up the beach. At first, I was excited to help clean the beach, but then I realized it was much more than cleaning the beach. Healing the bay is a way to understand nature and see the impact we as humans do to our environment and it is sad. Seeing all the trash laying around, and countless dangerous objects that can be harmful to people and animals everywhere. This just shows how careless we are as humans and what we are doing to the environment. Yet, I am very happy that I had the opportunity to give back to the environment and take part in something that changed our planet. Hopefully by my actions cleaning the beach, people will understand how important it is to keep our beaches clean and save our world from littering and carelessness.

Cleaning Dockweiler Beach

Hello my name is Kevin Sakamoto. My classmates, from English 101 at CSULA, and I participated in a beach cleaning event called Heal the Bay at Dockweiler Beach. I had never done anything like this before so I was interested to see what it would be like. When my classmates and I were told that this was one of the cleanest beaches I was hopeful that I wouldn’t have to pick up very much trash, but when we got there I realized that even one of the cleanest beaches is pretty dirty. It made me wonder what the dirtiest beaches looked like. My classmates and I helped clean the beach from 9-12 Sunday morning and managed to fill several bags full of trash. While cleaning the beach I realized the number one thing we found was cigarette butts. It was unbelievable how many we found. We also found a lot of plastic and Styrofoam pieces. The worst thing is that all these little pieces of trash are mistaken as food by the wild life and are hazardous to their health. We even found a knife and a car sunroof. There were many other weird thing found that should not be on a beach. All this made me realize how filthy people can be by not throwing away their trash. Next time I got to the beach I will be sure to throw all my trash away to help prevent harm to the environment. Cleaning the beach was a fun experience and opened my eyes to how little things can help out the environment.

Healing the Bay

Hello, my name is Enrique Gomez. I am a student in a English 101 class at Cal State L.A. This past Sunday my class participated in an event, "Heal the Bay", where we went to Dockweiler Beach to clean it. My group decided to only clean the streets behind the beach area. I was shocked at all of the trash we found lying around the area. I'd imagine the actual beach has a lot more trash. We found a lot of the same trash over and over again, such as plastic bottles, plastic/beer bottle caps, and cigarettes. As if that wasn't enough, we also found a knife at the top of a hill. Why are all of these objects just lying around? People could get seriously hurt, especially from the knife we found. The beach is suppose to be a place where people can simply relax without having to worry about getting hurt. However, these dangerous objects are making it difficult to do so. I didn't realize how horrible the trash at beaches were before. I am glad that my English 101 class decided to attend the "Heal the Bay" event over the past weekend. Not only did we clean the beach for our own safety, but also for the safety of all the animals that come across this garbage on the beach daily. I would hate to see what the other beaches' garbage is like.

A Day at the Beach

It is very interesting to find out what our beaches look like and really take the time to see what buried treasures we can find. At least for some beaches it can be done like Dockweiler Beach, where we were able to clean up the beach and create research for those who are trying find out what is killing our marine life. For the most part I feel happy that we, the Stretch Composition class, were able to take a Sunday off and use our energy for something effective and efficient for the ocean and it inhabitants. All of the trash that our class was able to pick up and throw away was remarkable. Not only the amount, but also the size of each object. For example, my team found about 10 glass bottles of beer, a Styrofoam cooler, and a few paper and plastic bags. And how not to forget the hundreds of cigarette butts we found lying around. People have to become aware of what they are doing so that this can be avoided. It is not fair that our marine life has to pay the price for our laziness. It doesn't take a lot of energy to take your trash to the trash can!

Helping The Environment

This past Sunday I was able to participate in a great event. As part of my English class I was able to go help out at the beach and see why they say the beaches are so dirty. While arriving there it was clear that i couldn't really see the beach I don't know if it was because the day was so foggy or because right next to the beach the air port is there and obviously the planes create smog in the air. Well besides that when arriving there we were given instructions to clean up the beach and pick up anything that looked to be out of place. Some of the things we didn't pick up were things that looked dangerous or something harmful. While walking around the beach with my classmates we discovered various things that didn't seem to fit into the beach environment. For example we found socks laying around like if it was a laundromat, we found tampons GROSS!!, we also found allot of cigarette buds. A beach is suppose to be a friendly environment where you want to take your family for a nice time not to see all these disgusting things. As part of the clean up we were given bags and a tally marker to check of how many things we found and the number of times we found them. I was along with all of my classmates and it made it feel like we were a group and not just one person doing all of the work. I was able to cooperate with all of the guys and see how they all work and also find out that we can all work together. It made me feel good that I was doing something to help out this planet and that even though it is not as big of a clean up as i wish it could have been it made me feel good to know that I was doing something to help out. While doing all of this it make me think about the comic i had read in our book called As The World Burns and it shows that if we do not do anything to save the world it will end up dying. We must also think about the animals that are living here and we must also learn that we are not the only ones living in this planet. It makes me feel great knowing that I am not the only one that thinks this and also that I was able to make a difference for one day.

- Stephanie Rodriguez , Instructor: Hasmik Barsamian

Bay Needing Healing

Hello. My name is Mike Landaverde and I participated in an event that allowed me and my peers to clean Dockweiler State Beach. They told us this beach was one of the cleanest beach in the Los Angeles area, but that day it appeared to be far from clean. This beach was covered with all kinds of trash, from ocean to where the street met, and this was hard to believe to be the cleanest. What we did at this event was get into groups and get even in the most uncomfortable places to be to pic up trash and all kinds of objects that where not suppose to be lying around that seemed like a potential threat to all kinds of life, both human and animal. Why we chose to do this matters a lot, because this shows that marine life is very important to us. Apart from that, we as humans enjoy the beach several times in a year, and many are exposed to dangers of getting hurt or sick, just like life in the ocean. Even if it was just one beach and it was for such a short time, we eventually were able to pick up multiple bags of trash and make somewhat of a difference that probably would have prevented health risks.