College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

Beach Clean- Up

GROUP MEMBERS:

Anna Arevalo
Laura Buzzone
Jack Chirazi
Misty Christman
Roderick Sablan
Jennifer Yamanuha

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Our Social Change project was made more successful by everyone's enthusiastic participation. Group members took on the following responsibilities:

1. Sponsors were found. The Surfrider Foundation and I Love a Clean San Diego agreed to supply materials and guidance for our Pacific Beach-to-Mission Beach clean-up.
2. Additional contacts were made, in order to solicit donations from local businesses that would lend further material support. For example, Cost Plus stores donated green ribbon to our project, so that we could hand out pieces of ribbon for people to wear during earth week, which served as a visual/symbolic reminder of not only our project, but of the general importance of taking care of our environment.
3. Other contacts made include: Kinko's who donated printing services which enabled us to get the word of our project out, through flyers and posters. Flyers were handed out at several venues including the Earth Day celebration at Balboa Park, SDSU campus, and the Carlsbad flower fields.
4. Group members also made efforts toward publicity, in order to maximize participation in our beach clean-up project. KUSI, KNSD, KGTV, and KSWB television stations were contacted and asked to air announcements of our projects in their respective community announcements forum.
5. In addition, The Reader ran a print announcement of our project.
6. The Associate Students group was asked by project members, to allow us a booth at the SDSU campus Earth Day Fair. This opportunity led to the recruitment of fellow students, for participation in our project. We had two fraternities represented on the day of our clean-up.
7. 91X's Radio station music director, Chris Muckley was contacted and agreed to air a radio announcement regarding our project.
8. Ralph's grocery stores were asked to donate water for the project, and came through for us. At our display table, on the day of our clean-up, were two cases of spring water, which was handed out to thirsty participants.
9. The City of San Diego donated trash bags and lent our group pick-up sticks, which were used beach cleaners, making the task of picking up garbage, less back-breaking! In addition the City took all of the collected garbage, for disposal.
10. Channel 10 news was notified of our project, and wound up airing a short clip showing our "SDSU students' Social Change Project"

On Sunday morning, April 27, 1997 our group gathered bright and early in front of Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach. We posted more flyers pointing the way to our display table, which included print information on environmental issues, a sign-up sheet for participants, all the tools people would need to conduct their individual clean-ups, which included gloves, bags, and pick-up sticks. We also had little "give aways" such as pencils and bumper stickers, along with the above mentioned bottled water. Flowing strongly behind our table, in the coastal breeze was a flag displaying a picture of our planet. It served well as inspiration!

We had approximately fifty people sign the participants' roster and go to work. We considered this number of people participating, a success. The lesson for us however, is that to get people to give up their time and energy, many, many more people need to be exposed to the message, in order to secure a minimum level of participation. We also learned, after the fact, that although we did our best to reach all media forums, radio, television and print, in order to maximize participation in our project, we overlooked what was in our own backyard; Fraternities and Sororities. Often this sector of the SDSU population is searching for opportunities in which to serve their communities, as a part of their membership in campus houses. In other words, this was a potential goldmine of participation that was erroneously overlooked.

Finally, because the focus of our group project was the environment of local beaches, we thought that we could go a step further in the protection of them. In this, we divided group members into teams of two, and approached independent businesses in Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach and Mission Beach in order to ask these businesses to become involved in the "Adopt a Beach" program. From each area, three businesses were given a "How to get involved" pamphlet, which came from the Adopt a Beach program, sponsored by the California Coastal Commission.

In conclusion, group members are satisfied with the success of our project. We all felt that we made a little dent in the negative impact of garbage in our local beach environment, but recognize the continuing battle.

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