FoLAR River Cleanup

Hello, my name is Cristina Avila currently a freshman at CSULA. On April 22, 2017 I was lucky enough to have a chance to participate in not only what was just an assignment for the course English 1005B with Professor Hernandez, but as well as an opportunity to help out our environment. Along with many others I attended the FoLAR event, a day in which plenty of people joined together to help cleanup the Los Angeles River.  With me I brought my friend who loves volunteering in events like these. I am a person who tries my best to not pollute the earth more than what it already is. I would not be able to live with myself if I was the type of person who littered, my conscious would not leave me alone if I were to do so. As well as I am the person who will call out someone else when they litter or leave the water running. Prior to this event I have participated in other cleanup events so I was not surprised with the amount of trash I came across.

While cleaning up one of the topics from class that came to my mind was the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Heal the Bay presentation we had in a previous course with Professor Hernandez. Everything that Heal the Bay described about the Garbage Patch is exactly what the river looked like. Looking around I saw what looked like trees growing plastic, and plastic growing out from the floor. With so much trash surrounding me I felt as if I was in a scene of Wall-e.

After the cleanup I realized how beautiful the river would be to just go and hang out at if it wasn’t so dirty. If only people were not so careless about their actions, we could have such beautiful places full of nature. Hopefully with more events like these more and more people will join in to help make a difference.