Last week at the OpenStack Summit, we organized the first OpenStack community service day, a beach cleanup with the Surfrider Foundation. We had nearly forty OpenStack community members volunteer their time Friday morning to help pick up trash from South Mission Beach, San Diego, as well as collect data for local environmental campaigns. We also learned about the types of litter making the biggest impact on our beaches–namely plastics and cigarette butts–and how we can reduce our consumption.
Our volunteers gathered a total of 43 pounds of debris from the beach: 35 pounds of trash and 8 pounds of recyclables. We collected more than 1,720 items, including:
- Plastic Bags: 68
- Plastic Bottles: 26
- Plastic Bottle Caps: 86
- Plastic Lids, Cups, Straws: 59
- Plastic Utensils: 17
- Plastic Food Wrappers: 295
- Cigarette Butts: 221
- Cigarette Lighters: 8
- Fishing Gear: 28
- Styrofoam: 127
- Balloons: 12
- Other Plastics: 222
- Aluminum Cans: 34
- Metal: 44
- Glass Bottles: 7
- Other Glass: 37
- Paper: 201
- Cloth: 75
- Other: 153
- Most Unusual Items: Nail clippers, PVC pipe, Glow stick, Medical Marijuana Bag
Thank you to DreamHost and SUSE for sponsoring the event, Dee Rosales and Marissa Rosen for organizing it, Simon Anderson for the great idea, and to all of the volunteers who came out! We look forward to hosting another service day at the next Summit, so please be thinking of organizations or causes you’d like to support.
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