California has been making continuous efforts to promote clean energy and reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Since July 2021, the state has launched the “Clean California” ground garbage cleaning project with a budget of $1.2 billion, aiming to provide clean highways and community environments for people. The amount of garbage cleaned up over the past three years is quite astonishing.
According to Governor Newsom’s office on July 30, over the past three years, California has cleaned up 50,000 tires, 12,000 mattresses, and mountains of garbage – over 2.6 million cubic yards, weighing approximately 43,000 tons. This amount of garbage is enough to cover all nine lanes of Highway 5 from San Diego to the Canadian border with a thickness of 1 inch.
The Clean California project is part of Governor Newsom’s California Comeback Plan, which aims to not only clean up trash but also provide more job opportunities. According to a press release, the project has created 18,000 job positions in California, including offering jobs to individuals who have been previously incarcerated, on probation, or experiencing housing crises (homeless). The project has also enlisted nearly 60,000 volunteers to help clean up trash.
The cleaning efforts started on highways and expanded to surrounding roads, streets, parks, public places, and local communities. So far, 94 out of 312 planned projects have been completed, with 171 more projects scheduled to be completed in the next 12 months.
In December 2021, the Governor’s office announced that California’s highway system had cleared 4,500 tons of garbage, equivalent to filling 83 Olympic swimming pools with trash. It was also projected that within three years, another 1.2 million cubic yards of garbage (21,000 tons, enough to fill the Rose Bowl stadium three times) would be removed from California.
In September 2022, the Governor’s office reported that over 15 months, 1 million cubic yards (over 16,700 tons) of roadside garbage had been cleared, enough to stack two piles of trash from the surface of the Earth to beyond the International Space Station (250 miles orbit).
In October 2023, the Governor’s office allocated $114.5 million to support 60 clean-up projects. 18 of these projects were dedicated to cleaning areas around train stations and bus systems, including allocating $3.3 million to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency for cleaning transit stations and bus stops; $1 million to the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System for South Bay Transit Beautification; and $1.1 million to Stockton for improving the transit center. Additionally, 42 other projects benefited “underserved” communities.
The Clean California project will continue for several more years as the garbage accumulated on the California highway system over the years has caused economic, environmental, and public health issues. Waste has also been piling up for years in some non-highway areas as well.