Sunshine from start to finish …bagels and juice to kick off the day and pizza, tacos, and lots of refreshments at the Surf spot to finish the day… what a great day of work!

And a GREAT day for Sharp Park Beach and Rockaway bluff as well!

Forty two pounds of trash doesn’t seem like much but when you add the 3125 toxic cigarette butts collected to the mix, the Genentech Earth Heroes saved tens of thousands of animals by joining forces to help Sharp Park beach!  Packing straps (from newspaper delivery), gun shells (probably from the Sacramento river), and broken car windows surprised us all.  An Oakland A’s jersey will find new life but the huge stogie will not!  Most  shocking of all was the 3128 cigarette butts that was collected by the team. One star team of 4 woman came back from the street toward the 7/11 store with a tall container nearly full and counted out a record 1000 discarded butts?

Special thanks to the team who cleaned out 328 butts from the cigarette pots near the benches (and another team who replenished the sand) and another 78 on the trail outside of them.  The parking lot/street team collected 400 and 3 different teams collected 300 each…OUCH!  In the end, the pier, promenade, street, parking areas, beach from Mori Point to the pier and several adjoining streets as well was cleaned!

But our day had just begun!  We drove over to Rockaway where the real work began!  Here we had a heavy hitter team who tackled the Star Thistle and worked down the slope to the rocks, the hand tool team that tackled the switchbacks, and the shovel/lopper team that worked from the bottom up to the rocks!  Star thistle, ox tongue, cape ivy, wild radish, fennel, and mustard all met their match today!  While we couldn’t weigh all of the green waste, no doubt this would total a ton or more!  And most important, all of these seeds have been removed and will not be growing here next year.

What a wonderful way to escape the office!

Special thanks to the PBC team of  Lynn, Tom, Karen B., Karen G, and Gitte.