Once a year, on the third Saturday of September, tens of thousands of volunteers head out to beaches, rivers, lakes and waterways across California to do something wholesome, fun and selfless: pick up trash.
Katie Rodriguez here, highlighting the state’s largest annual volunteer event and a chance to make our beautiful spaces even more enjoyable for everyone. This Saturday, Sept. 19 from 9am to noon, Monterey County will be dotted with beach cleanups, from Andrew Molera State Park and Garrapta State Beach in Big Sur to Fort Ord Dunes State Park and Upper Carr Lake in Salinas.
Such cleanups, coastal and noncoastal, have been underway in California since 1979, when a Humboldt County community member by the name of Joe Abbot teamed up with his wife Ann Morrissey to secure a grant for what became the first “Beach Beautification Project.” At the time, the couple had grown frustrated with the mounting garbage problem turning the area's uniquely rugged beaches into dumping grounds for plastics and household waste.
Over the years, community concern began to spread. In 1985 the California Coastal Commission, which runs the annual California Coastal Cleanup Day events today, organized its first statewide cleanup, which drew approximately 2,500 Californians that year. Since then, more than 1.6 million volunteers have removed over 26 million pounds of trash from beaches and inland waterways across the state.
Volunteers are also keeping data, recording the kinds of trash they’re picking up and where—information that ultimately ends up guiding policy makers and the public on pollution that needs to be addressed.
Cigarettes and cigarette filters have consistently ranked among the top ten items found on beaches over the past 37 years. The California Coastal Commission has recorded almost 8.6 million cigarette and filter items, accounting for 36 percent of the total trash collected on beaches.
Food wrappers and containers come in second, with 2.7 million items collected over the same period, accounting for 11 percent of the total. Caps and lids rank third, with 2.3 million items, or 9.5 percent of the total.
In 2025, Monterey County had 606 volunteers participating, collecting 2,483 pounds of debris from our waterways, which as we know, eventually flow to the ocean.
And what better way to start your Saturday morning than hanging out at the beach, feeling good about joining others in making our corner of the world a better place?
The California Coastal Commission has created an interactive map of cleanup locations which list tons of events across the County and state. Check it out here.