All Hands on Deck! Celebrating Earth Day on San Juan Island

Earth Day and the bi-annual Great Island Beach Clean-Up are big, festive, fun deals in the San Juan Islands. Islanders and visitors alike come together and are hard at work on every road and beach in the county. Some even paddle around smaller islands with their kayaks to clean up hard to reach areas. There is lots of waving and camaraderie. When the isle is sparkling clean, everybody gets together at the great San Juan Brewery in downtown Friday Harbor to weigh their garbage, win prizes, make art and have a well-deserved, yummy, local brew. This year’s motto is: All Hands on Deck! Sounds like you and your family? Come join us!

When?

The Great Island Beach Clean-Up takes place on Saturday, April 22, 2023. Check in at the San Juan Brewery at 10:00am to sign up and get supplies. Meet us - the staff of the Bird Rock Hotel and our sister hotel the Earthbox Inn & Spa - any time between 10:00am and 2:00pm at the beach.

Where?

We will tackle Jackson’s Beach, a lovely driftwood beach one mile from our hotels. You can’t miss us. We are the ones in the Earthbox T-shirts. If you walk there around noon from our hotels, you might catch a glimpse of the Friday Harbor pet parade, so cute! We’ll have garbage bags. Bring some gloves, a snack and water (please not in a single use plastic bottle – the water in the Bird Rock lobby is filtered!).

Why?

Every minute the equivalent of a garbage truck of plastic gets dumped into the ocean, which breaks down into microplastic and gets mistaken for food by marine life. Plastics take 450 years to break down. It is said that in 2050 we will have more plastic than fish in our oceans. Plastics are endocrine disruptors and have been linked to hormone-related cancers and fertility issues in both human and non-human animals.

Maya's Legacy Whale Watching, Friday Harbor, WA

This display at the Friday Harbor Whale Museum replicates the stomach content of a Grey Whale found dead in 2010.

Celebrate!

So we make it better. And then we celebrate. We’ll all convene at the San Juan Brewery in downtown Friday Harbor at 3:00pm. We’ll bring our garbage, have it weighed, win prizes, make art and celebrate the Earth. See you there? We would love to meet you.