EarthDay/ foLAR

LA River Clean Up

Hello my name is Diana Barcenas I am in Professor Hernandez 1005B-82 English class this semester 

we are learning about the LA River, and how we can reduce our carbon foot print in a way. Last semester we did service learning for Heal the Bay, we went to Santa Monica Beach to clean up the trash that doesn't make it to the trash bins. The reasons why I went to the beach clean up was to prevent more trash from being pulled into the ocean. Now the LA River clean up was something similar in the way that we still needed to pick up trash. It is upsetting knowing how much trash was inside the river especially caught in between plants and trees. 

I arrived at the foLAR a bit but once I got there I was trying to look for the professor I bumped into some of my classmates I followed them to go meet up with the professor, after we met up where the professor was located I went to go pick up trash and take pictures. I started looking for trash and all I found was plastic bags and blue plastic tents that were destroyed. I with another classmate looking for trash and he found a huge frog sitting by the water and we tried looking for more but that seemed to be the only frog there. Being there at the river made me realize that we need to have more people involved in their community for future generations to enjoy. If we don't take care of our environment then who will? It is all up to us to make our little world a better place as long as we are around.

This was an amazing learning experience for me to know how our LA River is doing, which is not so great. At least we have great people doing great things for the environment, I could only imagine what our world can look like in a few more year if it weren't for these environmental programs that bring people together as one big community that is concerned with the well being of a small part of our planet. I hope to continue in this journey and find myself going to more environmental movements like this one.