Volunteers gather hundreds of pounds of creek trash during SLO cleanup day

ECOSLO’s annual Creeks to Coast Cleanup — San Luis Obispo’s largest volunteer event coinciding with California Coastal Cleanup Day — was held Saturday.

With the return to in-person events, Creeks to Coast Cleanup Day was manned at Mission Plaza by the city of San Luis Obispo’s biologist Freddy Otte, who was on hand to give out supplies for volunteers.

Otte said the event is a way to “have more community involvement, along with educating the public about what happens in the creeks typically ends up in the ocean.”

“People typically pick up tires, cups, aluminum cans, plates ... cardboard and just trash in general that blows around and usually ends up in the creek system,” Otte said. “We try to remove (the trash) before winter rains. That’s why we pick toward the end of September for our annual cleanup.”

Ahead of the event, Otte said the groups will likely remove hundreds of pounds of trash and “hundreds of cigarette butts.”

“Everything from the creeks typically runs down to the coast,” he added.