Summer Heat Hiatus

Some people have asked what happened to us over the last month. Rest assured, we are still here to fight the good fight against litter in our fine city! Our last clean up, however, was plagued by scorching heat on the streets and required a lot of water to keep our volunteers hydrated. Therefore, we decided to take a brief break during the sweltering lat August months.

Our next clean up will be on the weekend of September 12-13. Hopefully it will have cooled down a little bit by that time. If anybody has any suggestions for locations, please feel free to post here or to e-mail us at lacleanup@gmail.com.

Vermont/Beverly Clean Up Pictures

Sorry for the long delay in posting pictures of our clean up, but I wanted to make sure to thank everybody who came out for our Vermont/Beverly clean up!

Pictures of the event below:

Our morning clean up team at the Vermont/Beverly subway stop. It was an especially hot day, but we managed to do a good amount of cleaning!

At this point, I think people just wanted to get out of the sun....thanks to everybody who came out!
Some of the trash bags that we filled up around the intersection!

Do Your Part for California Beaches

Today's LA Times has an article about the poor water quality in Los Angeles County beaches due to urban runoff. Our goal at the LA Neighborhood Clean Up Project is to prevent problems like urban run-off to the extent we can. Unfortunately, however, the problem persists in our county and it only hurts our coastline. An excerpt from the story below:

"Although California may be famous for its surfing and swimming, the state ranked among the worst in beach water quality nationwide, coming in 22nd out of 30 coastal states. Los Angeles County was home to the most polluted beach water, with 20% of samples exceeding state standards.
. . .
"Bacteria can flow into beach water from sewage accidents such as the spill that forced closures in Long Beach on Monday. Storm water flowing through urban areas can also pick up animal waste, fertilizer, motor oil and other contaminants that are dumped into the ocean."

Check out the full story here.

Vermont/Beverly Clean Up Sat 7/11 at 10am!

Hey all, it has been a brief period of inactivity due to the holidays and hectic work schedules, but we are back on our game now! Join us for our next clean up this Saturday, July 10 at 10am at the corner of Vermont and Beverly!

There is plenty of metered and non-metered street parking in the area, but you can also leave the car at home and take the subway to the Vermont/Beverly stop on the Red Line. You will see us in the green t-shirts on the corner by the subway stop. As always, we will have Tang's donuts for our volunteers (maybe we will even work on bringing some fruit or something as an alternative).

Everybody is welcome and we are looking forward to having a great summer event!


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East Hollywood Clean Up Wrap Up

Thanks to all of those who came out for our East Hollywood clean up. We had a great time and got some great support from the people in the area, even those people just hanging out at the Hollywood and Western subway stop! It was a lot of fun. We took very few pictures but we posted some below. Until next time, keeps those streets clean!

John is going for the high five in that picture, but nobody else is going along.

A picture of a few of our volunteers from the day.

The fruits of our effort, a truck full of trash.

Ahhh, East Hollywood, will the streets ever be clean? With our volunteers, maybe...

East Hollywood Clean Up on June 14!

Join the LA Neighborhood Clean Up Project on June 14 at 10 a.m. to help clean up the streets of East Hollywood! We will be meeting at the corner of Hollywood and Western at the Red Line Metro stop. You will be able to spot us in our green t-shirts. Everybody is welcome to come help clean up this wonderful area of Los Angeles (maybe even grab some great food afterward in Thai Town)!

Below is a map of the intersection for your convenience:


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LA Team Effort Interview

A while back John and Andrea did an interview with the LA Stormwateer Program. Recently, they posted excerpts from the interview on their LA Team Effort blog, which chronicles LANCUP's humble origins. An excerpt of the post is contained below, the full LA Team Effort post can be found here.

Andrea Ambrose and John Lobato, Co-Founders of Los Angeles Neighborhood Clean Up Project (LANCUP), talk about their organization. LANCUP was started in November, 2008 and organizes local residents in frequent clean-up events around the city.

SP: How did you first get involved in your local community and what was your motivation for doing so?

Andrea Ambrose and John Lobato: The two of us were driving down Virgil Avenue on the border of Silver Lake and East Hollywood and we started talking about how much trash was on the streets in that area. A couple of weeks later, we drove down the same street and saw that there was even more trash that had accumulated, so we decided to just go to Home Depot, buy some brooms, and start cleaning up the streets ourselves. People on Virgil probably thought we were crazy those first few times that we went out to clean, but over time we got people to come out and help and after a number of events we have gathered a great group of community volunteers who help at clean-ups. Since that time, we have worked with the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council and the Greater Echo Park and Elysian Park Neighborhood Council in organizing events. Everybody has been really enthusiastic about helping out and volunteering.

SP: What are your plans for the future? What projects do you have planned?

Andrea Ambrose and John Lobato: We are planning on expanding our geographic reach to other areas of Los Angeles. We are always looking for people who live in different neighborhoods to act as Neighborhood Coordinators, to help us plan events. We have also started a campaign to get more trash cans installed in our area. When we were cleaning up on Virgil, we walked five blocks before running into a trash can. We figure that part of the reason there is so much trash is due to the fact that there are not enough trash cans. As parts of Los Angeles become more walkable, the City needs to compensate and install more trash cans. Our local businesses and city council members seem pretty enthusiastic about the idea—the biggest (and most obvious) problem is money. Installing a new trash can costs about $10,000. We are considering throwing a fundraiser with the help of local businesses.