Volunteers clad in neon safety vests and equipped with trash grabbers picked up waste from the streets of Isla Vista on Apr. 6, following Deltopia, the annual unsanctioned street festival.
Isla Vista community members helped clean up litter on the streets the day after Deltopia. Lance Sanchez / Daily Nexus
Organized by the Isla Vista Recreation & Park District’s (IVRPD) Adopt-A-Block program and in partnership with the Associated Students Environmental Affairs Board (EAB) and the Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD), 61 volunteers collected 792 pounds of trash. According to Thea Winterich, a fourth-year anthropology major and IVRPD stewardship coordinator, this is 36 pounds less from the 828 pounds of trash collected last year.
Advertised on social media and by word of mouth, volunteers signed up online or in person when checking in at the IVRPD district office by the corner of Embarcadero del Mar and Seville Road.
The event included equipment such as buckets and trash grabbers, and attendees were offered free pizza from Woodstock’s. To ensure the volunteers’ safety, a mobile cart picked up hazardous waste from the street.
Jenna Norton, the public works and sustainability director for IVCSD, stressed the impact that the trash left in the wake of Deltopia has on the local community and environment.
“Deltopia brings in a lot of people, and with it a lot of trash. People just think they can wreck the community,” Norton said. “If it weren’t for events like this, that litter would just sit there until it eventually ended up on our beaches and in our oceans.”
Norton also emphasized how the IVCSD’s Spring Festival, an alternative to Deltopia, aimed to reduce waste and litter in I.V. by centralizing safety resources as well as food, water, trash cans and restrooms. However, to Norton, reducing litter and damages from Deltopia needs to be a community-wide effort.
“It might really come down to residents feeling a sense of respect and responsibility for their community and holding other residents and out-of-towners accountable for their actions,” Norton said.
Cardboard boxes were left on the street during Deltopia. Anushka Ghosh Dastidar / Daily Nexus
Spencer Brandt, the president of the IVCSD Board of Directors, felt similarly to Norton that the responsibility for keeping I.V. clean rests on the entire community.
“It’s our responsibility as a community to make sure that we pick up after ourselves, that we leave our community just as beautiful as we found it before the weekend,” Brandt said.
Second-year environmental studies major Olivia Wenzler decided to volunteer after seeing the trash left behind by Deltopia. While Wenzler felt Deltopia was an overall positive event for the community, she also found the amount of garbage left behind concerning.
“I think [Deltopia is] bittersweet because it’s a great time; it’s also pretty harmful,” Wenzler said. “I wouldn’t want to stop it, but I do think it’d be nice if we put more consideration in taking care of the environment that we have.”
Third-year chemical engineering major and volunteer Gia Singh also felt divided about Deltopia’s impact.
“I feel Deltopia is good for the sense of community,” Singh said. “But I feel the streets [are] not respected as much as they should be, especially when you get a lot of people coming from out of town; they don’t see it as a community thing.”
Wenzler hopes the turnout for cleanups following Deltopia will increase in the coming years.
“What we’re doing right now is great, and I think people getting more involved in their community is definitely helpful. I think more people should do it, I think more events like this would be great,” Wenzler said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 6 of the April 10, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
