Not everyone gets to spend Friday afternoon on the beach and then enjoy a delicious cookout with a bunch of cool people and call it “work.” I love my job! At the end of June, I headed down to Mission Bay for a sponsored beach cleanup with about 60 employees from Qualcomm.

These folks know how to do team activities right!

They showed up together, had team colors and a scavenger hunt, and then all hung out for lunch and some pickup football afterwards. Everyone was really engaged, asking questions about marine debris and plastic in the ocean. Luckily, I had San Diego Coastkeeper’s outreach intern with me to answer the really detailed questions. The most common comment was, “When we got here I thought the place looked so clean! But then when we started picking trash up, I couldn’t believe how dirty it was!”

All told, we collected 156 pounds of trash in about two hours, got a good tan and met some new people. Pretty phenomenal.