In July, Earth Shine will celebrate its sixth year of helping our community 

ATASCADERO — On Saturday, Feb. 12, from 10 a.m. to noon, 45 people met at the southwest corner of Sunken Gardens for an Earth Shine Clean-Up Day. In the two hours, the crew full of volunteers was there; they cleaned up around 35-yards of trash. 

“Basically, we were in the creek almost the entire time. The Atascadero Creek. Parallel to Sunken Gardens,” said Earth Shine founder, Mike Campa.

The clean-up day also covered the West side of 101, behind ABC Church, behind Tent City, and under the bridge of El Camino Real. 

“That’s what we’re all about is getting out there. You know, we’re focused on activating communities and bringing them together to realize that each of us…just putting in two hours here and there can make a huge impact. We like to show that for the families, for the children that are out there working with us. We got a lot of kids. A lot of churches came out too, so it’s just a lot of everybody working together towards a common end,” Campa said of the day.

Earth Shine facilitates two clean-ups a month. One that takes place every second Saturday of the month rotates through both San Luis Obispo County and Northern Santa Barbara County, as they include Santa Maria in their clean-up efforts. In addition, every third Saturday, Earth Shine works exclusively on the River Walk in Paso Robles. 

“We do quite a large stretch there, and we’re just working on returning it to nature,” added Campa. “We do like to focus on inland areas and areas oftentimes that don’t receive the attention that a lot of the clean-ups [do], you know, like on the beach clean-ups and stuff like that. Those are being done quite a bit, but we like to focus on inland areas.”

Next month Earth Shine will be in Paso Robles. They do two events in Paso; their last one was in December. “That was pretty big clean-up there,” stated Campa. On Mar. 12, the group will be meeting at Larry Moore Park. 

“We wait until a week, two weeks before and kind of go do some recon and see what areas need to be covered. We actually are the coordinators for the Adopt A Street Program in the City of Paso Robles. So that gives us little more insight [into] which areas need to be covered here in town,” continued Campa.

In July, Earth Shine will celebrate its sixth year of helping our community with beautification and picking up trash. They’re always looking for sponsors to keep the program going.

“We’re still getting our sponsors together for our 2022 season. We’ll be finishing that up mid-March. Any businesses or individuals that want to donate, reach out to us. We really appreciate the donations. They help our overhead and things like insurance and fuel costs. They also help us to do things like we did Saturday, where we can give free pizza and refreshments to the volunteers. We always love to be able to do that when we can,” said Campa.

Earth Shine also provides businesses and individual groups with the tools to be able to create clean-up days of their own, free of charge. “If businesses or groups are looking to do some clean-up, we provide all the supplies, we provide all the grabbers, and we can accommodate up to 100 people for a clean-up.”

To find out more about Earth Shine, go to: earthshineorg.com, or email them at: contactus@earthshineorg.com.