|
I finally got around to setting up the technically unapproved but no one cares Albany Marsh trash can and needle bucket shebang a goodly number of you were irresponsible enough to buy me. I don't know all of your names, but I do like the cuts of your jibs! Will this setup capture all the litter and needles at this site? No. Will it capture most of it, if we loosely construe the term? Yes. Like its red-headed stepchild up on Grizzly Peak, this can will agglomerate the trash. As I always say, agglomeration is 87% of the battle! I also ogled the marsh in general. The site we cleaned last time is still pretty spotless, but the rest of the marsh could use another cleanup or two. If you'd like to waste part of your precious weekend dragging trash out of a swamp for free, sign up on our Volunteer page for the email announcements I've begrudgingly resolved to resume. Thanks everyone!
0 Comments
The pandas took a slight detour from pawing trash to volunteer with Sidewalk Trees & Gardens in Oakland today! We planted 20 already-large street trees along this stretch of 81st near the Coliseum - in a few years these fast-growing planty plants will provide much-needed shade, cooling, and colorshapes that are good for our souls. I can't recommend this organization enough - we all need more green! Follow them on Insta and sign up for future events if you're feeling inclined. Great work everyone! A truly fantastic day cleaning a truly enormous amount of trash out of the Albany Marsh with Sophie, Elisa, Brendan, Sylvia, Scott, Tara, and Andy! You guys all worked like famished pandas in a freshly-filled dumpster and are an absolute chocolate-covered hoot to work with - very well done!!! One of the highlights of today's shebang was my attempts to use the honest-to-god mall ninja grappling hook one of you fantastic people was unwise enough to buy me. Grapple fever is a hard sickness to cure, but my abject failures to snag a floating mattress seemed to do the trick. Still, we got that shopping cart - well done, Scott! Our meetup site being the place to eat fast food, inject drugs, and apparently lose at least one shoe, I'd like to lock a bootleg trash can and needle bucket to the nearby fence. I could also use another tranche of trash tons. If anyone's feeling generous, I've updated my Amazon Wishlist accordingly! Thank you so much everyone, very well done! The Pandas - well, specifically, this Panda - padded all the way down to San Jose to help local cleanup hero Andy / Pengweather and his 25+ Peng Pals clean an enormous amount of crap out of Coyote Creek. Everyone did an amazing job and busted their busy little chops for hours in the rain - solid work, folks, and very well organized Andy!!! As an aside, it's a real shame that the people who developed the Bay didn't have a better eye for natural beauty. We could have preserved these creekside corridors as lovely lush parks with paths and picnic areas for everyone to enjoy and wildlife to flourish. Instead, we paved them over, fenced them off, and built boring strip malls and stroads - snore. Sooner or later, we'll wake up to the fact that mountains of cash and crap aren't making us happy and that community and flourishing nature are where life's real wealth is at. Restoring Coyote Creek to what it looked, sounded, and felt like 500 years ago - minus the grizzly bears and wolves - would be a fantastic step in that direction!  A huge thank you to the 50+ fantastic folks who made it out to Point Isabel to grab trash and cheer our local cleanup hero Andy today! Y'all did an absolutely bang-up job - seriously, such piles! - and were such a joy to work with! Very well done! If you'd like to join us at a future cleanup, sign up here and follow me on insta! And if you don't mind getting your political paws dirty with some good old fashioned direct democracy, check out our Tidal Marshes page to learn more about how we can de-schmutz this marsh! Thanks again everyone, see you at the next one!!!  Here's the view from Grizzly Peak. If you can find a better view in the Bay, I'll eat my hat. If you don't think this view deserves an awesome new park, I'll eat yours too! Seriously though, Grizzly Peak's pullouts were built in the 1930s - their anything-goes vibe no longer works. The best way to transform the mountain into a clean and welcoming space for everyone to enjoy is for the East Bay Regional Park District to develop and manage Grizzly Peak as a world-class park:
Again, UC Berkeley has $7 billion in the bank, and the Park District is right across the road. Here's who to reach out to if you'd like to help transform this cultural and environmental jewel into an awesome new park for everyone to enjoy. Keep your message short and friendly, tell a story, and don't forget that these folks work for us! UC Berkeley. As shown on this map, Cal owns most of the numbered pullouts and trashed areas to the west of the road. Contacts include the UC Regents, the Office of Sustainability, the Facilities Department and its head, Felix DeLeon ([email protected]), and the Zero Waste Program and its head, Lin King ([email protected]). Oakland and Alameda County. Oakland owns Grizzly Peak Boulevard and approximately 12' off the pavement on either side. Contacts include Janani Ramachandran (Oakland District 4), Oakland Public Works, and OAK311. In addition, Nikki Fortunato Bas represents Alameda County District 5, which includes Grizzly Peak. State and Beyond. Buffy Wicks (State Assembly District 14), Tim Grayson (State Senate District 9), Brent Blackaby, Berkeley District 6 (Grizzly Peak is outside Berkeley's city limits, but his district has strong sway), and Gavin Newsom (Governor). And here's that view again! 
If we can't find the courage to transform Grizzly Peak into a world-class park, the least we can do is compel UC Berkeley to live up to its legal and environmental obligations to keep the site as clean as the rest of its campus. With $7 billion in the bank and a grizzly bear mascot, there is no excuse for the sordid and embarrassing status quo.
As shown on this map, Cal owns most of the land west of Grizzly Peak Boulevard, including the pullouts and most of the trashed areas. At a minimum, here is what the university must do to ensure this public property is a clean and welcoming space for everyone to enjoy: 1. Competent Trash Cans at Each Pullout. The UC Facilities Manual provides that Cal must ensure a "safe, healthful, and secure environment" (§§ 1.3.1, 1.4), an "environmentally acceptable atmosphere" (§ 1.1.2), and "well-maintained facilities" that "meet the University's requirements" (§§ 1.1.7, 1.1.2). These standards apply with the same force and effect up on Grizzly Peak as they do in and around Sproul Plaza. In addition, Cal's Zero Waste Plan repeatedly stresses that "one of the most effective ... activities" for capturing litter is the installation of "standardized signage and bins" at "major thoroughways and entrances and exits" (pp. 4, 26). According to the Plan, "Bigbellies are now the standard [trash] receptacle for outdoor locations at UC Berkeley" and should be "strategically placed" in "high-trafficked areas," including "on campus as well as off campus" (pp. 26, 27). In order to meet these legal and environmental obligations, Cal must place and maintain standardized Bigbelly trash, recycling, and compost containers at pullouts 0 through 5 and 7, as well as this pullout, which serves several heavily-used trails. These pullouts see hundreds of visitors every day, and people routinely tell us that the lack of trash cans is the main reason people litter. The 2026 Litter Study by Keep America Beautiful found that inconvenient or missing trash cans is the main reason people litter. Cal recently install Bigbellies at this pullout located next to the Lawrence Hall of Science, likely because it is in plain view of the university museum. All we're asking is that the same standards be extended to the rest of its campus. Go (Grizzly) Bears! 2. Weekly Litter Cleanups. The cleaner a space is, the less permission people feel to trash it. In addition to standardized Bigbellies, weekly litter cleanups are essential to ensuring Grizzly Peak remains a clean and welcoming space for everyone to enjoy. 3. Leave No Trace Signs. Grizzly Peak does not currently feature standardized signs asking visitors to dispose of their trash in the (soon-to-be-installed) Bigbellies. As with all relationships, if we want specific behaviors we have to use our words. 4. Butt Containers. Cigarette butts are some of the main litter items we pick up. Given the site's shocking fire risk, installing numerous butt containers at each pullout would seem a prudent investment. 5. Seal Dump Sites. For years, a handful of trashy people have taken advantage of Grizzly Peak's remote location and lack of enforcement to use this natural wonder and cultural institution as a free dump. After three hellishly difficult cleanups (see here, here, and here) and an award-losing video, Cal finally cleaned up the main illegal dump site in April of 2025. Unfortunately, as with its insufficient and non-spec portable waste containers, this cleanup is not enough. Unless and until the pullouts above the dump sites (located here and here) are sealed with railings or logs placed close to the road in a manner that blocks all parking, trashy people will just keep throwing tons of junk down Grizzly Peak's ravines while pocketing their dump fees. Indeed, a tour in December of 2025 demonstrated that all three sites have been heavily re-dumped since. Again, $7 billion in the bank and a grizzly bear mascot. UC Berkeley must do better. If you'd like to help encourage Cal to live up to its legal and environmental obligations, here's who to reach out to. Keep your message short and friendly, tell a story, and don't forget that these folks work for us! UC Berkeley. As shown on this map, Cal owns most of the numbered pullouts and trashed areas to the west of the road. Contacts include the UC Regents, the Office of Sustainability, the Facilities Department and its head, Felix DeLeon ([email protected]), and the Zero Waste Program and its head, Lin King ([email protected]). Oakland and Alameda County. Oakland owns Grizzly Peak Boulevard and approximately 12' off the pavement on either side. Contacts include Janani Ramachandran (Oakland District 4), Oakland Public Works, and OAK311. In addition, Nikki Fortunato Bas represents Alameda County District 5, which includes Grizzly Peak. State and Beyond. Buffy Wicks (State Assembly District 14), Tim Grayson (State Senate District 9), Brent Blackaby, Berkeley District 6 (Grizzly Peak is outside Berkeley's city limits, but his district has strong sway), and Gavin Newsom (Governor). The Pandas did an absolutely bang-up job cleaning a good chunk of this beach today! We had at least 16 people show up, including Jeremy, Alana, Greg, Mary, Tony, Susan, Cynthia, Mary II, Christina, Jen, Rowena, Sam, and several others who popped in and out. And the weather was absolutely perfect to boot! This is 100% a team effort and none of this would have happened without each and every one of you - you guys did an absolutely fantastic job and busted your Panda chops on some truly filthy trash! I'll probably schedule another cleanup for the weekend of January 10-11 or 17-18, weather and my fickle whims permitting. Keep an eye on this sub and follow my profile for future announcements! Also, if you'd like to donate to support our work, here's my Amazon Wishlist - the grappling hook is for dragging shopping carts, tires, etc. out of chest-deep mud - and my Venmo. Appreciate it! Thank you so much to each and every one of you who made it out - very well done today!!! Call me Panda-mel. Some days ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no trash in my paws, and nothing particular to interest me in Berkeley, I thought I would pad about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before dumps, and bringing up the rear of every garbage truck I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to Point Isabel as soon as I can. This is my substitute for Netflix and chill. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to trashed beaches along with Pandas Davis, Gina, Michelle, Barbara, and Mirabel. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all raccoons in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards oceanic filth with me. - Moby Dick, page 1, "Call me Ishmael." There being no law against Pandas prowling abroad to paw at trash, this incorrigible gang of small furry beasts decided to descend on the Bay! Padding down from our mountain fastness, Pandas Wendy, Barbara, and moi visited this beach in Point Isabel and removed all the trash! Well, most of it. The visible stuff. Holy hell the microplastic - SB 54 and extended producer responsibility can't happen fast enough. Anyway, it's clean - for now - and having enjoyed this lunge at literal littoral litter, I'll probably post other group events in / around the area in the future. Enjoy! |
