FOLAR LA River Needs Love

Hello, my name is Daniel Lee and I'm currently a freshman at Cal State LA on board the ENGL 2030 class. In all honesty, I never knew that April 22nd was actually Earth Day until I came back from the LA river clean up organized by FOLAR until Google Chrome told me through a new tab. It's actually embarrassing to talk about but I did attend the wonderful LA river clean up alongside fellow students as our first ever cleanup for most of us college students. And I have to say that the experience, while weird at first, became very understandable. At first I received a weird offer for volunteering as a supply handout along with three other classmates. After the long handout process until, say 10:20, the four of us actually decided to go out and pick up trash. The point of the matter is, for this event, is the condition that the landscape the "river" is in. It didn't seem like a river; just a random piece of land that grew vegetation while random trash was piled alongside it. The first thing I thought to myself was, "Oh, this is simple, we're just going to walk a far distance until we see the actual river and clean up by the riverbank." Then I realized that the land I saw was the real deal. Not only did I realize that we trashed a place like this, but then there were sporadic pieces of plastic, rusted metals, and literal landfills of rocks covering and sealing said trash. I even saw a piece of a used mattress that was rotten and rusted. I'm amazed that organizations like FOLAR are able to teach others about the current situations that we're surrounded by and how we can fix them slowly, but for the better future. That day was not only an unexpected Earth Day for me, but a phenomenal one.

Rusted metal found between stones.

Random electronic chip unearthed. Rather jarring that this exists.

A wire so long and buried so deep that took strain to get out.