Our meeting with City of Olympia’s Clean Team earlier this year was fun and informative! Nathan Lomas gave an enthusiastic overview of all the work the Clean Team does to keep our town clean and safe. In addition to removing graffiti, sweeping sidewalks, and picking up litter, they also empty and sort those blue recycling bins, clear drains and remove ice and snow, and help repair and improve our public areas.
Oly Surfrider has been working with the Clean Team to install our Surfrider cigarette butt canisters throughout downtown as part of our Hold On To Your Butts program. We were stoked to learn that the Clean Team loves our canisters, which are easier and safer to install, empty, and maintain than some of the canisters they've used in the past.
Clean Team members have continued to work with us for our regularly scheduled Downtown Butt Pickups, a new type of cleanup we've begun to compliment out HOTYB program. We walk the streets of downtown and pick up thousands of butts that don't make it into our canisters before they have chance to get washed into the Sound.
A big thanks to Mark Rentfrow and Nathan Lomas from Clean Team for both the work they do and for coming to speak to our chapter. Also a huge thanks to Pizzeria La Gitana for the excellent food, service, and commitment to being Ocean Friendly!
If you have any thoughts or comments, let us know! Email us at OlySurfrider@gmail.com
A Florida native, Liz started her career as a marine biologist, working with sea turtles and commercial fisheries in the Florida Keys and spending her vacation time teaching at Duke University's marine science summer camp. While completing her master's degree in Sustainable Development & Conservation Biology from the University of Maryland, she taught sustainability to undergraduate students while also volunteering as a docent at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Ocean Hall and leading overnight camps at the National Zoo. After graduating, she got hitched and moved out west, where she’s spent several years studying salmon and streams and trying to embrace this thing called elevation. She learned about Surfrider’s programs and campaigns as the Olympia Chapter’s Volunteer Coordinator before being hired on as the Washington Regional Manager. When she’s not supporting our five Washington chapters and three BC chapters in their amazing work, she likes to run on trails, bike around volcanoes, freedive, play frisbee, read in the sun with her chickens, play guitar when no one's around, and make maps. Liz has a special fondness for swamps, cypress trees, and thunderstorms, is recreationally obsessed with ocean sunfish, and will shamelessly eat any unattended leftovers.