SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - San Diegans showed off their community pride Saturday during the 11th Annual I Love A Clean San Diego Creek to Bay Cleanup.
San Diego is more beautiful because of efforts of thousands of volunteers who, together, picked up 100,000 pounds of trash from San Diego.
About 6,000 volunteers spent their Saturday removing trash and debris from a record 90 different sites across San Diego taking part in the 11th Annual I Love A Clean San Diego Creek to Bay Cleanup.
CBS 8 Meteorologist Matt Baylow kicked off the event at one of the locations -- Grant Hill park in Sherman Heights, one of the many clean up sites that were not right near the water.
"Today we have 75 percent of our sites in inland areas, different parks, canyons, streets...volunteers are removing debris before it makes its way by wind and by rain into our watershed, and out eventually into the bay and ocean," said Pauline Martinson, I Love A Clean San Diego.
While Matt got to work painting, other volunteers, many of them children, also grabbed rollers and brushes to beautify Grant Hill park.
"As many years as I've lived here, I have never seen this much participation, all these groups coming and I'm really grateful and I'm thankful for everybody that's coming out," said a volunteer.
Many came out hoping to make a difference.
"We had dinner together, all talked about it, and decided it was something we wanted to do," said a volunteer.
Their task was to stencil an environmental alert about keeping litter and debris out of city storm drains.
"It doesn't get treated like the sewer water does, it just goes straight to the ocean, trash, that washes out to see," said another volunteer.
School groups also took part in the cleanup and about 20 of the sites were located in different canyons throughout San Diego.
"So we can live more clean with the world and be happy," said a young student.
In City Heights, Ocean Discovery Institute's Watershed Avengers provided youth-led habitat restoration in Swan Canyon where together, youth, community and corporate volunteers worked side by side to help transform Swan Canyon into a safe and healthy place it was once.
"These are just often overlooked areas, and highly urban areas that really need attention, they're little hidden gems in your community," said a volunteer.
News 8 wants to thank all of the volunteers for taking part. If you would like to get involved, I Love A Clean San Diego hosts restoration projects, for every age, year round.