Celebrating Earth Day

"The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests... that’s all there is. That’s the whole economy. That’s where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world." ~ Gaylord Nelson

Hello, my name is Mayank Saboo. I am a sophomore at California State University, Los Angeles. The quote above is by senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day. He explains, in order to keep us alive we need something from the Earth. Which he considers as the wealth of the world. 

On April 22, 2017, me and some of my friends volunteered for The L.A. River Clean-Up program hosted by Friends of The LA River (FoLAR). This event helped me a lot and was a chance for me to give something back towards the environment. Professor Hernandez invited us to this community service learning activity which was a part of my English 2030 Technical writing class.

Helping out FoLAR with setup

I was very excited to go to this event and spend time to pick up what doesn't belong in the river. As soon as I got to the clean up site I meet a lot of my classmates and also met Professor Hernandez. Since me and my friends Tim, Jerome and Daniel came early to the site, we were asked to help out FoLAR for setting up banners, and tents for the event. We also helped other volunteers who were at the site for cleaning up the river by providing them with equipment such as gloves and trash bags to collect trash. I did not expect to see such a crowd would turn up for this event. It made me feel happy and proud about how much people do care about the environment. 

Daniel found a piece of computer component

After me and my friends were finished with helping FoLAR with setting up, we decided to go and clean up the river as that was our main motto. In the act of cleaning the river, I found a variety of trash from plastics to glass and even metals. One of my friends found out an electronic component which was interesting to see as what was buried in the L.A. river.
Soon after that we found a wire sticking out which got us obsessed to find out more about it and remove it. We spent 20 mins digging through and found out that it was longer than expected.

Wire that we found out deep in the river bed

This event helped me a lot to understand how we pollute the environment and how it effects us eventually. I would be love to go to more of these events as it makes me feel around and happy about fixing what's  harming nature and other forms of life.