On April 14, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted in unanimous support of an ordinance to ban the use of plastic bags at retail shops and impose a surcharge on paper bags. The goal is to cut down on the amount of plastic bags found in our oceans, harming marine life, and littering our waterways, while promoting reusable bags as an energy saving, environmentally responsible, and simple alternative to plastic bags.  Save Our Shores has been working tirelessly on our Plastic Bag Ban Campaign for years now, and from June 2007 – March 2010 removed over 19,887 plastic bags during beach and river cleanups. Read more about SOS Plastic Bag Ban Campaigns...

The ordinance, originally sponsored by Supervisor Mark Stone, calls for a 10-cent fee for every paper bag used, eventually rising to a 25-cents per bag, with the revenue collected to be kept by the retailer to provide funds to implement no-bag programs, such as offering reusable bags for a low price.

Join Save Our Shores and the Santa Cruz green community this Saturday, April 17th, to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day at the Santa Cruz Earth Day Festival!

Where: San Lorenzo Park Benchlands behind the County Bldg

When: 11am - 4pm

This free, rain or shine event will be powered by renewable energy, have fun activities for kids, live music, educational information and even a composting workshop. Come enjoy a great community event and learn how you can do your part to protect the environment.

Looking for a hands-on Earth Day experience? Come volunteer with Save Our Shores for our San Lorenzo River Cleanup from 12 noon - 2pm.

Meet us at the Save Our Shores booth at 12 noon and lend a hand for the health of our rivers and ocean!

For more information on the Santa Cruz Earth Day Festival...

On Saturday February 13th, over 30 volunteers came to support Save Our Shores' river cleanup efforts. SOS hosted a cleanup on Branciforte Creek where volunteers collected over 1,000 pounds of trash and over 400 pounds of recycling! Volunteers removed everything from couches, chairs, a bed frame, vacuums, tarps, shopping carts, electrical wires, batteries, car parts, cans, bottles, and lots of plastic items. Thank you to those who showed their support for our local watershed and made this creek cleanup such a huge success!

Save Our Shores will be hosting a creek cleanup along Branciforte Creek on February 13th from 9am to noon. We will have a check-in table at the intersection of Market Street and Avalon Street. SOS will have heavy duty gloves, rubber boots, buckets and bags but feel free to bring your own garden gloves or tools. We will be cleaning along Branciforte Creek down to where it meets San Lorenzo River.

Families are welcome and will be able to clean stretches along the bike path which are safe for smaller children. All children must be accompanied by an adult. All participants must sign a waiver form at the check-in table prior to participating or you can download the waiver below and bring it with you to speed up your check-in process.

Terry McCormac , a photographer, caught this alarming photo recently at Moss Landing.  Obviously the pup swam head first into a plastic bag and its mom is attempting a rescue.

YOU can save otters from chewing through plastic by joining Save Our Shores !

Your support today will
Work directly at sites to minimize the amount of discarded trash that can hurt sea otters .  . . 
Shows individuals  how they can prevent this from happening even before visiting their local beaches . .
And create an environment where this can not happen at all!

THANK YOU!

Click here to see the data of what was collected on Annual Coastal Cleanup Day in Santa Cruz County.

The 25th Annual Coastal Cleanup Day marked the largest community wide cleanup effort in Santa Cruz County to date. 3,802 volunteers removed 9,012 pounds of trash and 3,903.5 pounds of recycle from our local beaches, rivers, sloughs, and kelp beds.

Save Our Shores offered 50 cleanup sites throughout the County including beach, river, slough, kayak, SCUBA, and paddle boarding sites. By far our river sites yielded the most trash in pounds, while volunteers down on the beach collected thousands of smaller pieces of debris such as cigarette butts, plastic pieces, and Styrofoam pieces.

Thanks to over 1,200 students in Santa Cruz, our volunteer capacity has grown significantly. We are proud of our local students and commend them on their hard work and dedication to keeping our ocean healthy. Additionally, we had many more local businesses get involved this year by sending employees down to our cleanup sites.

Come join us for the Save Our Shores Annual Coastal Cleanup Day Rally at ONE LOVE Reggae Thursdays at Cypress Lounge
Enter to win for SOS Raffles and Prizes!
When: 9pm to midnight  (21 and over)
Where: Cypress Lounge 120 Union Street, Santa Cruz
Cost: FREE!

Featuring DJs Spleece (Reality Sound International) and DJ Rudi B. (Selecta 7 Sound)

For more information on ONE LOVE Regge Thursdays go to:
www.myspace.com/831massive

Save Our Shores, along with Oceana and others, organized a Sanctuary Mayor's Ocean Summit meeting with the aim of gathering all Mayor’s from along the Monterey Bay Sanctuary and further to discuss the threat that plastic poses to our communities and ways to combat single-use plastic items. 13 Mayor’s signed a Pledge to “work together and in our communities reduce and eliminate polystyrene and single-use plastic bags."

Mayor’s, City Managers, and representatives from environmental nonprofits attended the Summit on August 28th in Watsonville. Attendees included Walter Rob, co-president of the Whole Foods, U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, Assemblyman Bill Monning and former Assemblyman John Laird. Cynthia Mathews, Mayor of Santa Cruz, was also in attendance. Click here for the official website from the summit.

The San Jose Sharks have adopted Cowell Beach by the Boardwalk through Save Our Shores' Adopt-A-Beach Program.  Here is a link to the story on the Shark's website
The Shark's mascot Sharkie and about 15 Sharks employees came to the beach on Friday, August 28th and picked up 50 pounds of trash and recycling!
Sharkie also got to meet the Save Our Shores anemone! They were fast friends since sharks have no interest in a stinging invertebrate.
Thanks so much to the San Jose Sharks who have taken a step towards involving San Jose in beach cleanups and ocean awareness.  We are looking forward to more Sharks cleanups in the near future.

Save Our Shores is excited to announce that our July 4th “Pollution Prevention is Patriotic” efforts dramatically decreased the amount of trash left behind on Santa Cruz County beaches after the fun and often rowdy July 4th celebrations.  SOS staff and volunteers launched a widespread awareness and pollution prevention campaign leading up to this year’s Independence Day holiday that helped celebrators at the beach ensure that their party didn’t leave a big mess. 

Approximately 1,200 garbage and recycle bags were distributed to beach goers on July 4th through education and pollution prevention efforts in the Aptos parade (where SOS won Grand Prize! Check back for our July 4th and 5th YouTube video)  and at our local beaches.  Volunteers walked the beaches, approaching groups of celebrators to offer extra garbage and recycle bags and share information about where to dispose of your trash and what items are recyclable in Santa Cruz County.