Trashy Billboard Draws Attention To Beach

By Kurt Helin
Editor

A huge pile of trash right in the middle of Second Street is drawing a lot of attention.

And that’s just way the Surfrider Foundation wants it.

A billboard filled with trash collected from the Long Beach shore on one day in August sits above the corner of Second Street and Glendora Avenue (the billboard above the Belmont Station).

The only words on the board are “Collected in Long Beach on August 20.” The message is simple and clear, said Beth Barnes, president of the Long Beach Chapter of Surfrider.

“We thought it is a great way to get people’s attention on what’s going on at the beach,” Barnes said.

It is working. The billboard is drawing plenty of attention, Barnes said.

“I happened to catch a couple yesterday walking down the street and saw them stop and look at the billboard,” Barnes said. “I wanted to stop and talk to them about it,” Barnes said, saying she and other local members have been getting plenty of feedback.

Trash on Long Beach beaches has been a long-term problem — with the city’s beaches at the mouth of the Los Angeles River, not only its own trash but also a wide assortment of items from cities as far away as the San Fernando Valley can end up on the sand in Long Beach.

From July 2005 to June 2006, city clean-up crews collected more than 12,000 tons of garbage from Long Beach beaches. That does not include trash picked up during a number of volunteer beach cleanups.

While that time frame included a particularly wet winter, the 12 months prior to that still saw 2.500 tons of trash collected by city crews.

“Surfrider knows the problem is huge. We get so much from the Los Angeles River,” Barnes said. “We think getting people’s attention about the problem is a first step.”

The billboard came about because of an agreement the national Surfrider organization had with the advertising firm of Saatchi & Saatchi. The firm was looking to do some billboards and chose Long Beach.

“Surfrider contacted me from the national headquarters and said ‘Can you collect 40 bags of trash from the beach?’” Barnes said.

They collected enough trash not only for the Belmont Shore billboard but also one expected to go up in Torrance soon. The billboards themselves were put together by a company based out of Commerce that specializes in 3-D billboards, Barnes said. There is thin chicken wire over the trash to keep it in place and make sure it doesn’t end up on the street itself.

Barnes said she is unsure how long the billboard will remain up, but in its first few weeks, it has generated a lot of conversation.

“I never thought I’d be this excited about trash,” she said.

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