175 Pounds of Trash and 12,000 Pounds of Unwanted Items Collected
There is less trash on the ground and homes/garages are less cluttered after a productive Beautify Goleta Plastic Free July event. Close to 30 volunteers, many of them families, spent their Saturday morning, July 19, 2025, giving back to the community by participating in a Community Cleanup.
Together, they cleaned up 175 pounds of trash from the Ellwood and Marketplace neighborhoods. Also 64 vehicles dropped off a combined total of 12,000 pounds of unwanted items in a free bulky item drop-off nearby on Phelps Road.
Dan Rowell, City of Goleta’s Environmental Services Project Manager, said, “Beautify Goleta isn’t just about picking up trash, it’s about being a part of the community. There are so many good people in the Goodland eager to give back. It’s great to see families, new friends, and old friends, all coming together to learn about sustainable plastic-free lifestyle choices and keep Goleta clean and beautiful.”
A big thank you to Valerie with Mission Refill for being a Team Captain. She provided free soap refills to volunteers who brought their own jars and also had a bird feeder activity for the kids to do before or after picking up litter.
Even though our Plastic Free July Beautify Goleta event is over, we encourage you to think about how to reduce your plastic use year-round. The City’s Plastic Free Goleta plastic pollution reduction policy includes regulations to reduce the sale and distribution of:
- Disposable single-use plastic cutlery and straws
- Polystyrene food ware
- Polystyrene packing materials and coolers
- Polystyrene egg cartons, meat trays, and produce trays
- Mylar® or foil balloons and the release of any balloons
Watch a video on Plastic Free Goleta, featuring the City’s Sustainability Manager Dana Murray, here: https://youtu.be/riwTyWkGwdw.
It can also be viewed in Spanish at https://youtu.be/XpCJZ1mt6oQ.
More information about Plastic Free Goleta is available on our website at www.CityofGoleta.org/PlasticFreeGoleta.
Save the date for our next Beautify Goleta event – Saturday, September 20, as part of Creek Week and Coastal Cleanup Day. For more information on Beautify Goleta, go to www.CityofGoleta.org/BeautifyGoleta.
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Terrific. Goleta is doing the right thing.
It’s going to take a lot of reeducation and people are going to have to get used to the “inconvenience” of not having everything be disposable. Humans and our environment will benefit immensely from this change.
I notice single-use plastic bags aren’t mentioned in the article. Studies have shown that in areas where single-use plastic bags are not dispensed by stores litter consisting of those bags drops precipitously.
I am wondering, though, how many of the paper/cardboard containers being used in future as to-go containers (replacing sytrofoam/other plastics) have plastic linings. It’s going to be a long slog to do away with plastics, but we will definitely all benefit.
As an aside: I encourage everyone to use and reuse glass bottles for drinking water, rather than using plastic bottles. Drinking out of plastic containers is not healthy.