College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Justin Reynolds
Matt Kohan
Joubin Kohon
John Walters
Kelly Mathew
Jana Peterman

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

For our social change project, our group conducted a beach cleanup with Surfrider Foundation and I Love A Clean San Diego on Saturday, April 3rd, 2004. Every year, I Love A Clean San Diego hosts an annual “Earth Day Creek To Bay Cleanup” to kick off the month of April, and our group became a co-captain for the Pacific Beach site, alongside Surfrider Foundation. Surfrider’s representative, Stefanie Sekich, basically let our group take over the responsibilities of hosting the cleanup, which included getting supplies, promoting the event, and setting up and holding the event. Our group communicated with her at least once a week to make sure we were on schedule and to also make sure we were following the guidelines given to us by I Love A Clean San Diego. This left us in complete charge of marketing and recruiting for the cleanup, fundraising, and running the cleanup on April 3rd.

We believe our social change project most strongly relates to the Ethical Framework, Land Ethic. This framework states that a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community; an act is wrong if it tends otherwise. This directly relates to the conservation of our beaches by participating in activities that enhance the natural ecosystem of the shoreline, hence, through beach cleanups. We also believe our project relates to the Ethical Framework, Deontology, that states that actions are morally right or wrong independent of their consequences. We feel that an important principle for every citizen is to respect their environment for the benefit of themselves, others and the natural wildlife. We also believe the Ethic of Care Framework applies since it is the duty of people to respect the environment so that others can also enjoy it, which builds healthy relationships among individuals.

After our group decided to host a beach cleanup for the social change project, our first step was to contact an organization that was known for conducting them. We contacted Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves and beaches, through conservation, activism, research and education. We gave the organization our proposal to host a cleanup on the 3rd in Pacific Beach, and asked them if there was any way they would be willing to donate supplies or if they would be able to help us promote the day via newspapers and television. We spoke with Ms. Sekich, who had already volunteered to host the Pacific Beach site for I Love A Clean San Diego’s yearly cleanup. She was very happy to have our group co-captain the same site because she was already overwhelmed and stressed for time with Surfrider Foundation’s various environmental events. From that point forward our group pretty much took over the responsibilities of preparing for the cleanup, and Stefanie occasionally checked our progress to ensure we were heading in the right direction.

There are certain rules and regulations to follow when holding a beach cleanup, so our group attended an orientation on March 3rd , held by I Love A Clean San Diego. Here, we received a general guideline on what to do and not do, and also on what needs to be accomplished prior to a beach cleanup. The organization supplied us with 20 posters, sanitary gloves, garbage and recycle bags, and waiver forms. From here on out, our main focus was to get donations for water, and to find a way to promote our specific site’s cleanup with hopes for a bigger turnout than last year.

To recruit more volunteers for our specific site, our group decided to make posters and flyers that were unique to our location. Using Adobe Photoshop 7.0, we constructed personalized posters and flyers that contained all the relevant information about the cleanup. We made 30- 11’ by 17’ posters, 60- 8.5’ by 11’ posters, and 300 small flyers. We were anticipating getting all our the posters printed off as a donation, but we soon found out that most business’ must go through their corporate office in order to make donations, which usually takes about 3 months. Fortunately, Cal Copy printed us off 20- 11’ by 17’ posters at no charge and the Best Western printed us off 40 off the smaller posters at no charge. We only ended up spending $23.85 out of our own pockets, but we still considered it a down fall since it was unexpected. Our group met a few times during the week prior to the cleanup, in Pacific Beach and distributed the posters to various businesses between PB Drive and Garnet Street, and up Garnet Street to Cass Street. We focused on businesses that remained busy and almost every business was happy to help us out so it was no problem at all getting our posters advertised for free, in prime-view windows along the street and the boardwalk. Our group returned on April 2nd and handed out the 300 flyers in front of the site cleanup. I Love A Clean San Diego advertised the cleanup over the radio, the Union Tribune, Beach and Bay Press and Channel 4 San Diego.

As far as water goes, we were able to get donations from Albertsons and Surfrider Foundation, which left us with more than enough for our volunteers. We arrived with 12 cases on the day of the cleanup, and we had quite a bit left over.

The day of the event went very smooth, everyone arriving on time and prepared at 8:00am. We had plenty of supplies and water for all of the volunteers, and we were ready to play our parts in directing them with waiver forms and directions on how to go about picking up the different types of beach pollutants. The cleanup lasted from 9:00am until noon, and we collected a huge amount of waste for the number of people involved, which was less than our expected turnout, which we attribute much of to the fact that it was overcast and windy. We packed up the site after noon and turned in our stats to I Love A Clean San Diego, where they were than broadcasted over the radio and news stations.

We ended up with a total of 107 volunteers throughout the 3 hours of the cleanup. The total amount of garbage removed was 520 lbs, and the total amount of recyclables removed was 13.5 lbs. The reason the recyclables were so low is most likely due to the fact that many people walk the beach daily, picking up recyclables in order to trade them in for money. Our site was 1 of 28 that took place on April 3rd in the San Diego County. There were 1,500 volunteers among all the sites, with a total of 37,000 lbs of trash and 13,000 lbs of recyclables picked up, for a grand total of 50,000 lbs of waste.

Results from a cost-benefit analysis, using traveling expenses, wages lost and collateral materials totaled $804.49. We used pounds of garbage and recyclables collected as benefits incurred, which totaled $579.23. The means for determining these numbers came from our group member’s employment wages and surveys we took. It would appear that we had a net loss of $224.76, but we feel that the amount of benefits surpasses costs when you add in three hours of free labor from 107 volunteers, and the benefit of leaving the environment in a better state than it previously had been. Therefore, we believe our project was overall a success.