The Save Our Beach Organization held their monthly beach clean up on Sat. Feb. 16, 2019, despite the heavy rainfall.
The Organization has been around for 20 years as a non profit organization, letting people sign up the day of the event to volunteer and help clean up Seal Beach.
The event is mainly set up to clean up Seal Beach, however the organization share their resources to other clean ups in Long Beach.
With the donations that the organization gets, they use it to get supplies such as gloves, pickers, reusable trash bags, and tents.
Paul Stephen Masoner is the founder of the organization, he and his committee board members are always out for every cleanup to help.
Masoner and his wife started the foundation with people that also couldn’t stand seeing the beach filled with trash.
The San Gabriel River has a small opening at the start of Seal Beach so with heavy rain there has been an increase in trash flow from bigger cities.
“This is really a community effort, last week when the rain was horrible people still came out to help clean up,” Masoner said.
The organization usually has the 1st street parking lot at the start of Seal Beach, with free parking during the event.
From the start of the event till the end, there were about 400 volunteers helping clean throughout the day, from families to students.
Most of the volunteers that were out Saturday were small families, with parents setting an example for their young children to be apart of their community.
A student from LBCC Jade Perez said,“ I took environmental science one year and it inspired me to come out and help clean up our environment.”
Other student volunteers came with friends and had the same view as Masoner, to be apart of the community and help clean the environment.
A student from Cal State Long Beach, Esther Lagos Vilavoa said, “I’ve always been living in a beach environment, I’m from Veracruz, Mexico and the beach was always so dirty so since I’m here I try to be apart of cleaning up and now I enjoy having my beach clean.”
If you visit their website at www.saveourbeach.org, you will be able to see a full schedule for future clean up dates.