Heal the Ocean and the City of Santa Barbara are partnering in a mammoth cleanup of both the City and Santa Barbara south County coastline, being organized by EF International Language School, Santa Barbara campus. EF International has organized a Ocean & Environmental Awareness campaign that features a widespread annual beach cleanup on Earth Day, April 22, 2016. The program will include Heal the Ocean speaking to 300 upper level students at EF International in early April, and on Earth Day, the same 300 upper level students will be picking up trash at 12 Santa Barbara Beaches between Goleta and Carpinteria. Simultaneously, the other half of EF Santa Barbara (an additional 300 students, plus teachers and staff) will be assisting in a community clean-up project through “Looking Good Santa Barbara” to work with the City to clean up all parks and other public spaces.
This is a brilliant Earth Day undertaking for Santa Barbara! It will be a school-wide event where EF Santa Barbara will close its doors so that all staff, teachers and students can participate on that day. Heal the Ocean will be supplying HTO t-shirts and equipment for the cleanups. Susanne Heierling, Volunteership Coordinator for EF Santa Barbara, says it is the school’s vision to further introduce the EF & HTO Beach Clean Up model to other EF West-coast schools, including San Diego, Redondo Beach, San Francisco, Seattle and Honolulu.