Hi there. This is Laura with Cali Bamboo, and we are here in Ocean Beach, California. This is July 5th, so yesterday there were a ton of festivities on this beach here behind me. And so that’s why we‚ are here today. We are here to clean up the beach, and today Cali Bamboo is working with San Diego Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper, and with me today is Kate and she works with San Diego Coastkeeper. >>Kate: I work for San Diego Coastkeeper. I coordinate the beach clean-ups as well as work in the marine debris department. So we advocate for policy change to reduce the amount of marine debris. So we do these beach clean ups to physically pick up the trash that’s going to be washed away into the ocean. >>Laura: That’s awesome. So thanks for that hard work, and today in Ocean Beach we are finding one piece of debris in particular. Can you tell us what that is? >>Kate: Marshmallows. Yes, it is Ocean Beach tradition to have a giant marshmallow fight. We already have 500 pounds of trash, and I would say that the majority of that is soggy, sand encrusted marshmallows. >>Laura: In fact, one of our Cali Bamboo employees, in a five foot by five foot area of the beach square found 200 marshmallows. Over 200 marshmallows. I’m here with Gail Powell and Gail is a long-time resident of Ocean Beach, California, and she’s been coming to these beach clean ups the day after the fourth of July for a long time. Gail also writes for the San Diego Reader, and so Gail can I get your take of this clean up and the marshmallow fight and everything that’s going on here? >>Gail Powell: I have been here previously with the day after the fourth with the marshmallows, and this is the worst that I’veseen it. Previously it seemed it’s been pretty much confined to the pier, under the pier area, and that’s how it’s been for the last two years. It has been very bad there, but it has been bad in a specific area, now it seems like the marshmallows have spread north, and in fact the lifeguard told me, the marshmallows go all the way along the beach to Tower 3 in North OB. That’s quite a bit of ways. It started off very harmlessly as a little friendly rivalry between two families and from there it grew. And I understand that people want to have fun and they want to be free and they don’t want to, you know they wanna throw their marshmallows. And that’s cool. It’s a cool tradition. But at some point it reaches a level where it does start to be not necessarily a public hazard, but just unsightly and a sticky mess. >>Laura: So Cali Bamboo has been here in Ocean Beach for about 45 minutes now and we have picked up about 35 pounds of mostly marshmallows but also trash, and that’s 35 pounds out of the 860 pounds of debris that you see around me. Most of these bags are full of sticky, melting marshmallows. And it’s a good thing we got out here early, otherwise it would have been nearly impossible to get them out of the sand. So we’re a lot stickier and sweatier than when we began, but I think we’re done some good work.