Hello Everyone! My name is Roberto Alcaraz. I am a First Year student at California State University, Los Angeles and recently, I did my part during Earth Day 2017. On Earth Day, I joined FoLAR in helping clean up the LA River. Along with me, there we plenty of other Cal State LA students and volunteers who helped engage in the community and tried to make a change.
At the clean up there was all sorts of trash. Its amazing how much trash can be located in such a small area. Most of the trash I found here were plastic bags that were still fully intact. Trash bags were hidden in between trees and buried into the dirt. Unfortunately, plastic takes centuries to decompose so most of this plastic is going to last for generations. A lot of the trash has already been there for generations and has grown with trees and the little amount of plants there. Along with plastic bags, there were plenty of other trash like this CO2 gas tank. This rusty metal tank was floating along the river when I found it. It looks to be very old since the because of the rust growing all over it.
The best thing I liked about this community service project was the amount of students and volunteers that were at this place. It was surprising seeing so many people care so much about the environment to take time out of their day to clean up the river. With more people, more trash was collected. I collected three full bags of trash ranging from clothes to metal. Multiply this by the amount of people that were there and we collected a massive amount of trash. This was a great experience and I recommend everyone who can to join the next LA river clean up.