Fall Great Islands Clean-up takes place Sept. 24

The Coun­ty sends along news about the islands’ twice-annu­al beach and road clean-up event.

Join your fel­low islanders for the 2022 Fall Great Islands Clean-up on Sat­ur­day, Sept. 24 between 10 a.m and 2 p.m. Dur­ing this event, par­tic­i­pants of all ages can sign-up to col­lect trash on a des­ig­nat­ed beach or road, and then bring their col­lect­ed trash to the cen­tral meet­ing spot to be counted.

On San Juan Island, meet at 10 a.m. at the San Juan Island Brew­ing Co. park­ing lot (410 A St. in Fri­day Har­bor) to pick up trash col­lec­tion equip­ment and receive beach and road­way assign­ments. Cof­fee and good­ies will be pro­vid­ed by Laut­en­bach Recy­cling to fuel your efforts — bring your own cof­fee cup, please. Drop off your col­lect­ed trash at the same loca­tion by 2 p.m. There will be an after-par­ty at San Juan Island Brew­ing Co. with music by T‑Flo, $1 beers for clean-up par­tic­i­pants, and a Stew­ard­ship Net­work of the San Juans raffle.

If you’d like to be assigned a loca­tion ahead of time, con­tact Kather­ine at katherine@sanjuans.org for beach­es and Tina at kristinamargareta40@gmail.com for roads.

“The Great Islands Clean-up is a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty for our com­mu­ni­ty to join togeth­er and address the glob­al issue of plas­tic pol­lu­tion,” says Katie Flem­ing, San Juan County’s Sol­id Waste Coor­di­na­tor. “Every lit­tle bit helps — last spring, 173 miles of island roads and beach­es were cleaned by 350 awe­some volunteers.”

The Great Islands Clean Up is a bi-annu­al event held every spring and fall, coor­di­nat­ed by the County’s Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Stew­ard­ship Sol­id Waste Pro­gram in coop­er­a­tion with Orcas Recy­cling Ser­vices, Laut­en­bach Recy­cling, Lopez Sol­id Waste Dis­pos­al Dis­trict, San Juan San­i­ta­tion, Friends of the San Juans, the Stew­ard­ship Net­work of the San Juans, and many oth­er indi­vid­ual, busi­ness, and ser­vice group vol­un­teers. It is fund­ed in part by the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Ecology.

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