Useful Recycling for Potato Chip Bags

The company Ecoist, a Miami-based company that turns used wrappers and magazines into purses and handbags, recently announced a partnership with Frito-Lay to take unusable or obsolete chip packaging for Tostitos and Fritos and turn them into purses and other useful items like placemats. They will even release a "potato chip bowl" made from discarded Lays potato chip bags!

Check out the article on the LA Times for more details!

Earth Day Weekend Clean Up in Echo Park on April 25th!

In celebration of Earth Day, we are going to clean up Echo Park on Sunday, April 25th at 10am. We will be meeting at the corner of Sunset and Echo Park Bvld., in the Walgreens parking lot. Bring yourself, significant others, friends, pets, anybody willing to lend a helping hand!!! As always, donuts and supplies will be provided.

For a map of where to meet, click here: Map

We hope to see you there!

April 3 Heal the Bay Event at Silver Lake Library

This Saturday, April 3, a Heal the Bay representative will be leading a discussion at the Silver Lake Library concerning the impact of plastic bags on the environment. Should be an interesting morning, so if you have time, be sure to stop by! Details below.

Why Plastic Bags are Bad for the Environment
Talk with Q&A by Ellen Monocroussos of Heal the Bay

Date: Saturday, April 3, 2010
Time: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Location: Silver Lake Library

Ms.Monocroussos will discuss the damage caused by plastic bags and other trash in our rivers, seas and other natural environments, explain how Heal the Bay is helping to prevent this damage and suggest how we can all help to reduce the damage. (This program is planned in anticipation of Earth Day – Thursday April 22, 2010.)

Pictures from March 28th Clean Up

Thanks to everybody who came out for our March 28th clean up in Silver Lake. We had a great time seeing everybody and it was a successful kick-off event to spring cleaning season.

Below are some pictures from the event:

A few of our volunteers after the clean up

John is always doing a lot of talking, he should be cleaning!

And, as always, tying up the trash bags filled with some of the day's pickings.

Silver Lake Parkman Triangle Park Project

This past Saturday, John went to help out a group of Silver Lake residents working on creating a small pocket park in the formerly concrete intersection of Parkman and Silver Lake Blvd. The trees are now planted, so if you get a chance, go by and see the work. They are also always looking for volunteers to help out, so if you have some time any given Saturday, stop by and lend a hand!

Below is a picture of the newly planted trees and the dirt area that will eventually become the park:

Spring Clean Up March 28th in Silver Lake

In order to get the ball rolling again on our clean up efforts, we are going to hold our next clean up in Silver Lake on Sunday, March 28th at 10am. We will be meeting at the corner of Sunset and Griffith Park, right at the triangle park. Bring yourself, significant others, friends, pets, anybody willing to lend a helping hand as we start off the spring clean up season!!!

We hope to see you there!

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Silver Lake Clean Up on Sunday, October 4!

In order to get the ball rolling again on clean up efforts after an especially long, hot summer, we are going to keep it local and hold our next clean up in Silver Lake on Sunday, October 4 at 10am. We will be meeting at the corner of Sunset and Sanborn/Santa Monica, right at Sunset Junction. Bring yourself, significant others, friends, pets, anybody willing to lend a helping hand as we start off the fall clean up season!!!

As always, look for us in the green clean up t-shirts. Map below:

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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.

Virgil Ave Clean Up Wrap Up

A great contingent of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Clean Up Project came out for last week's Virgil Ave clean up on the edge of Silver Lake and East Hollywood. We cleaned up a few blocks in a neighborhood that could definitely use it, and, most of all got to spend time with some of our great members. Below are some pictures of the clean up and we hope you join us at the next one!


Some of our clean up team returns, check out those awesome t-shirts!


The celebration ensues....good cast of characters!


Take two, John looks less prepared for this picture...


Ahhh, people enjoy our events so much, see the smiles?


The remnants of our clean up supplies...they look lonely...

Effectiveness of Catch Basin Screen Covers

An interesting conversation is taking place over at the LAist regarding the utility of catch basin screen covers. If you are not familiar with the catch basin screen covers, they are essentially screens placed over storm drains intended to allow water, but not the accompanying trash runoff, to flow down the storm drains. Although these are certainly an improvement, our observation has been that the trash tends to accumulate around the screens and is rarely swept up properly by the street sweepers.

The city of Los Angeles has installed a number of these screen covers, focusing particularly on the neighborhoods of Silver Lake, East Hollywood, Echo Park and other high-trash areas.

Has anybody come across any places where these screens are particularly effective? Is there anyway that we could improve upon the screens or make them more effective?

LA County Beaches, Still a Bummer

Heal the Bay released their annual California Beach Report Card earlier today. No surprise, but LA county beaches dominated the list of Top 10 "Beach Bummers" with the worst water quality in the state.

One of our organization's primary goals is to help prevent the runoff of the interior parts of the cities from reaching our city's beaches. The release of Heal the Bay's study demonstrates why it is essential to take care of our cities and beaches. If there is a silver lining to the study, it is the following statement in Heal the Bay's press release:

"One of the reasons that Los Angeles County lags in water quality is the fact that its monitoring agencies collect samples directly in front of flowing stormdrains and creeks. Monitoring at these 'point zero' locations, where polluted runoff often pools, is the best way to ensure that health risks to swimmers are captured in water quality data."

The LAist points out that some of the beaches listed below, however, are "nowhere near storm drains," such as Avalon Beach on Catalina Island.

Top 10 Beach Bummers

1. Avalon Harbor Beach on Catalina Island (Los Angeles County)
2. Cabrillo Beach harborside (Los Angeles County)
3. Pismo Beach Pier (San Luis Obispo County)
4. Colorado Lagoon (Los Angeles County)
5. Santa Monica Municipal Pier (Los Angeles County)
6. City of Long Beach at LA River outlet (Los Angeles County)
7. Poche Beach (Orange County)
8. Surfrider Beach at Malibu Creek (Los Angeles County)
9. Campbell Cove State Park Beach (Sonoma County)
10. Doheny Beach at San Juan Creek (Orange County)

Heal the Bay's full report card available here.

Virgil Ave Clean Up Sunday May 17

Please join us this Sunday, May 17th to clean up the area where the LA Neighborhood Clean Up Project first got its start (for some LANCUP history, click here)-- Virgil and Melrose! We will meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Melrose and Virgil (Map).

Look out for us, we will be in the green t-shirts. We will bring the supplies and Tang's donuts, we just need you! Friends, families, pets, and kids of all ages welcome.

We also hear that there is a new record store/barbeque spot at Bellevue and Hoover, right around the corner, which may be work checking out after.

Where does all that trash go?

You may have always wondered...sure, I see those signs "drains to the ocean." Where does it go when it drains to the ocean though? Well, there is a "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," a huge region in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where all of the trash eventually ends up due to a combination of winds and tides. You can read more about it here.

Also, if you want to see a documentary that was aired on Good Morning America you can watch below. Remember, be careful with your trash!

April 25 Echo Park Wrap Up!

Just wanted to say a big thank you to everybody who came out to lend a hand to our Echo Park clean up this past Saturday. It was a great event and we got fantastic whether. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces along with a number of new ones! We are glad that we have developed such a great group of people in Echo Park and we hope that some of you will join us at other events around town!

Yeah, we are putting the cutest picture first, kids helping always makes for the best pictures!


John with George from the city...he looks very happy about the shovels...very happy:



Two of our great returning volunteers, seriously Tommy we will get you a t-shirt!


Chris and Holly showing off the immense size of the city trash bags:


John is pointing at something here...not really sure what!:


Here is a picture of our unofficial mascot "Salsa"...why is that his name? "Because people like to say Salsa"...:

A picture of the trash gathered in the back of the city truck...thanks George!: