Coronado Cays Yacht Club Restaurant is Emerald Green, Ocean Blue

Emerald Keepers is pleased to welcome the Coronado Cays Yacht Club as its newest Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Restaurant as they celebrate their 50th Anniversary. General Manager Dan Parker said, “We are excited to formally become a part of the ongoing efforts of Emerald Keepers to clean and maintain the waterways of Coronado and the South Bay. For many years we have proudly flown our clean marina flag here at CCYC, and we believe that in order to make lasting change, organizations and individuals must have a proactive approach to environmental sustainability.”

If you haven’t visited the Coronado Cays Yacht Club, you are in for a treat with a large, light and bright open dining room and bar. The food is excellent. They are welcoming new members and local residents booking the venue for corporate events and weddings and those who regularly sail up to their guest dock to enjoy food and beverage at the club.

Emerald Keepers is planning to install a marine trash skimmer in the Club’s marina just as they did at the Coronado Yacht Club. The skimmer at the Coronado Yacht Club was gifted by Emerald Keepers thanks to local donors, the Coronado Rotary Club, and a gentleman who donated the bulk of the funds. The skimmer is named after his dog and best friend, Boris, who loved to swim in the bay. Sadly, Boris passed away. The anonymous donor said, “I just love seeing Boris’s image on the skimmer and the way Emerald Keepers brought him to life through the signage that has Boris telling people about the skimmer.” 

“We will continue to do everything possible contribute to a clean environment for everyone to enjoy for many years to come,” said Parker. 

Congratulations, Coronado Cays Yacht Club for registering your restaurant as Emerald Green, Ocean Blue.

February Emerald Keeper of the Month: Tara Davies

Do you have questions about composting? Have you ever wanted to learn more about caring for your garden, native plants, and local wildlife? 

Meet Coronado Teen Librarian and Master Composter Tara Davies.

It’s Saturday morning in Coronado.  As the brisk, coastal air greets a winter sun, a community garden is taking root. Just feel the vibe. Listen to delighted high school voices as more plants are poking through the rich soil. Tara Davies, club co-advisor, alongside several Coronado High School Emerald Keepers, is creating new rows of seedlings. Other students are discovering small potatoes that have popped up among the greenery.  Almost-filled compost bins are nearly ready for the next step, which is to sift the compost.

When Tara was asked what her vision is for working with young people on environmental projects such as the Coronado School Garden mentioned above, she responded, “There is such a focus on the technical or virtual aspects of the future, I feel that people overlook that there is still so much we can learn from the natural world. I want to give teens an opportunity (and a space with the garden) to explore nature and life science. We’re at a critical point where the nature you and I have experienced may not be available in the same capacity for future generations. I think giving youth a chance to enjoy and experience it as we did can help them develop the same sense of stewardship”. 

Jesse Hill, co-president of the CHS Emerald Keepers Club, describes Tara as someone the students look up to and who is a good mentor.  “She is a really positive, kind person with a super spirit who passes her kindness on to others.”

Emerald Keepers President Amy Steward calls Tara “the environmental librarian.”  Tara has worked on Earth Day programs with Emerald Keepers at the Coronado Library and has joined the Emerald Keepers Board of Directors. 

Tara is planning several workshops for the public. She is also encouraging students to apply for Emerald Keeper Intern positions which will allow them to earn credit toward graduation requirements.

Emerald Keepers is proud to recognize Tara Davies as February’s Emerald Keeper of the Month. Her passion and expertise is inspiring our next generation of Coronadans to care for our coastal community.

Ivan Dunn — January Emerald Keeper of the Month

To talk with Ivan Dunn is to speak with a man of conviction and commitment. A retired Navy Captain and cryptological officer, Ivan has both travelled the world and established deep roots in Coronado… a far cry from his hometown of Bell City, Missouri.

Since retiring from the Navy, Ivan has immersed himself in civic activities. Foremost amongst these is his interest in and contributions to ecological and environmental initiatives. And this is where Ivan‘s and Emerald Keepers’ paths so fortuitously crossed. For years he had picked up trash along Coronado’s roads, beaches, and bikeway; as he states, “I simply couldn’t pass it by.” When he learned of Emerald Keepers, he immediately took their pledge and began expanding his trash mitigation efforts. His typical stop-bicycle-and-pick-up-small-items routine soon paled in comparison to the “mobile trash can” he designed out of a bike trailer and employed on what he describes as his “big pickup days.”

In characteristic fashion, Ivan was only warming up! Combining his love of photography, drones, and nature, he began creating videos documenting areas of interest in and around Coronado and used these to advocate for cleaning our environment and protecting wildlife. Two small examples are his videos of King Tides flooding over the Strand bikeway and documenting the history of the solar salt ponds in South Bay. Arguably his best video to date Is of blue herons nesting In the large tree on Glorietta Blvd — capturing the majestic birds in flight, eggs in their nests, and feeding their young. As he continues to keep an eye on these avian beauties, Ivan also notes, “I have seen Coronado’s bird populations — herons, egrets, snowy plovers, least terms — increasing over the years. We need to keep the waters clean for them!”

Growing up in a family of Rotarians, Ivan — a past President of the Rotary Club of Coronado — was very excited when Rotary International introduced its newest global Area of Focus: Supporting the Environment. He is quick to remind people that Coronadoan (and fellow Rotarian) Marshall Saunders was a huge and early influence in both Rotary’s and the nation’s environmental awareness. Of his own accord Ivan organized a group of Rotarians who conduct monthly bicycle clean-up rides down the Strand. He is frequently heard to quote Kelley Helfand (a fellow Rotarian), “Once you see the trash, you can never unsee it!”

As more and more citizens of Coronado pledge to follow the simple practices advocated by Emerald Keepers, each becomes a catalyst and positive example protecting our environment and making Coronado a more sustainable community. An indisputable role model, Ivan Dunn is most deserving of recognition as January 2022 Emerald Keeper of the Month!

Emerald Keeper of the Month: Elizabeth Paganelli

When the owner of Fair Trade Décor, Elizabeth Paganelli, wanted to showcase the importance of selling eco-friendly products found in her store, she put a call out for people to drop off plastic water bottles. With the help of her husband, Jude, they created a recycled plastic bottle Christmas tree and Menorah. Her neighbor Kristin Volkman helped her decorate the bottles. 

“People are coming in just to take pictures of the tree or themselves in front of the tree,” explained Elizabeth Paganelli. “It’s so cool to see how much people appreciate the recycled bottle projected!” 

Not only is it beautiful, but it shines a light on the importance of eliminating single-use plastics. Fair Trade Décor is an Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Business, following a list of guidelines set forth by Emerald Keepers. As a fair trade store, Fair Trade Decor works with artisans in developing countries and underserved communities. All of their products are sourced through the US Fair Trade Federation, European Fair Trade Organization, World Fair Trade Organization and other Fair Trade sources that require eco-friendly practices to serve the best interests of both the artisans and their communities. Everything in the story is eco-friendly. 

Paganelli is proud of the principles they follow which help alleviate poverty and prioritize sustainable social and economic development. Safe working conditions and children’s rights, prompt and fair pay, respect for cultural identity and environmental stewardship are among the principals to which they adhere. Paganelli said, “We work with partners in approximately forty developing countries and organizations.” 

Elizabeth Paganelli is passionate about unique handcrafted decorative arts and human rights. She opened her store in Coronado in December of 2017, just five years after opening her store in Del Mar. This year the store added U.S. eco-friendly, sustainable products. 

Emerald Keepers is pleased to congratulate Fair Trade Décor as our Emerald Keeper of the Month for December, as they remind everyone to Reduce, Reuse, and Rejoice this holiday season.

Jenny Johnson, November Emerald Keeper of the Month

Emerald Keeper of the Month is Coronado resident Jenny Johnson.  Like so many Emerald Keepers, Johnson has been involved in environmental projects throughout her life. 

For 21 years, she and her husband Richard have been trained to work in teams for weeks at a time with the Midway Island Annual Albatross Count. Albatross are one of the largest and long-lived (at least 60 years) birds in the world.  They are endangered due to human interaction.

Her interest in these birds began when, Johnson as a child, lived with her family in the 1950s on the Midway military base. She states that she was surrounded by birds, as Midway Island is home to 20 seabird species. “I had birds to play with all around my house and everywhere I went.”  Her continued interest in and involvement with these amazing and threatened birds was featured in an article about the Albatross Count in the Spring, 2021 edition of the Audubon Magazine.

Johnson also volunteers at the SD Natural History Museum in the Department of Birds and Mammals, organizing and helping maintain their collections of bones, skeletons and skins. 

She is a Coronado Rotarian who participates in the monthly Rotary Club beach and bay clean ups. 

Currently, Johnson combs the dunes, rocks and the beach for trash once or twice a week with her picker and custom-made collection bag. Starting at Center Beach and working her way to Dog Beach and back, she scoops up enough trash each time to empty her bag 3-4 times in the available trash containers. Her collection bag was fashioned from a tough, mesh boat laundry bag that unzips from the bottom. As the bag she bought was taller than her 5-feet frame, she cut the bag in half and sewed handles at the top. The mesh allows sand to escape, and the zipper at the bottom makes it easy and less messy to empty. 

Johnson says that trash is particularly bad after weekends and holidays with cans and bottles left everywhere. Another source of trash are the gulls who love to fling whatever they can find in the overflowing trash cans after the visitors go home.  

Johnson feels that her weekly trips to the beach are good exercise walking in the soft sand and scaling the rocks for trash. She says, “What could be better than exercising and cleaning the environment at the same time?”

Island Yoga Coronado is an Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Business!

“Island Yoga Coronado is part of a beautiful, amazing, yet fragile beach community. We are all stewards of our island and of all of the world’s islands and oceans. By removing plastic bottles from our studio and implementing energy saving measures, we join the Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Partnership to protect what is most important to us all, Planet Earth.” – Stephanie Anderson

October Emerald Keepers of the Month: CHS Teacher Katie Quinly’s Students and Aides & Katie Leontieff’s Adult Transition Program Students

Photo by Kel Casey

Katie Quinly’s students and aides along with Katie Leontieff’s adult transition students cleaned the beach to do their part for the environment. District PE teach, John Sink, arranged the clean-up at Center Beach. 

CHS aide, Kel Casey said, “It is important to show young people just how vital it is to keep our beaches clean for the enjoyment of all. The kids enjoyed helping the sea life by cleaning up and learning about the ocean.”

The students and aides worked together to pick up trash. They appreciated helping Coronado keep their beach clean and spending time together. Following their hard work, they enjoyed a snack and learned about sea life in our ocean. They look forward to their next beach clean-up. 

For their commitment to an Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Coronado, these Coronado Unified School District students and staff are our Emerald Keepers of the month. Congratulations to all!

Celebrate Sea La Vie -- An Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Business!

"Sea La Vie strives to source recyclable and sustainable materials and reuse packing materials as much as possible in an effort to reduce the environmental impact. We hope we can help reduce the impact on the planet by putting in the effort to consciously implement daily environmental good practices.” - Nicole Wing, Sea La Vie

Celebrate Coronado Taste of Oils -- An Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Business!

“We live in a beautiful part of this world with the best beaches in this Country. This I attribute to people caring for and appreciating their environment. It makes good sense as a small business owner to do our part and demonstrate to others what we can do collectively to be as GREEN as possible by taking conscious business practice steps in our daily routine.” – Michael Fisher, Owner, Coronado Taste of Oils

Celebrate Accalia Salon — An Emerald Green, Ocean Blue Business!

“I like sustainable resources as we only have one earth to leave for the next generations.”  -- Jessica Kephart, Accalia Salon

Celebrate High Tide Bottle Shop and Kitchen — Our New Emerald Green Ocean Blue Business

“We use recycled containers from a company called The Bottlebox. The reusable takeout containers use post-consumer reprocessed PET(polyethylene terephthalate), which has a lower carbon footprint and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 60%. We like to think making sure takeout containers don’t end up in a landfill makes the pizza even yummier.”  - Tom Latona, High Tide Bottle Shop and Kitchen 

September Emerald Keepers of the Month: Co-Owner Emerald City, Kelly Kraus and GM, Bryan Gutter

Helping Coronado become a sustainable city since 2010, Emerald City Surf Shop earns September’s designation of Emerald Keeper of the Month. Two blocks north of the Hotel Del Coronado, Emerald City—a moniker derived fromCoronado’s evergreen surf and ties to the Wizard of Oz—opened in 1988, the brainchild of brothers Kelly and Larry Kraus. They sell a wide array of skate and surf supplies and apparel and offer surf and beach equipment for rent. They love Coronado and do their best to help it thrive.

The 90 solar panels on the shop’s roof caught Emerald Keepers’ attention, and we asked co- owner Kelly Kraus what motivated him to install solar power. “It’s the right thing to do. It saves you money, yes. But more importantly, it’s the right thing to do. We also put solar panels on our own house.” Saving money and reducing consumption with solar for over a decade—a win for Coronado and Kraus.

Kraus has made other moves to give Emerald City a sustainable footprint, and he has noticed many of the brands he sells move in eco-friendly directions. Emerald City uses only paper bags in the store; they are bulkier to store and cost more, but the store does its best to minimize plastic use. Because the bags are paper, Kraus’s son does most of the bag-stamping with Emerald City’s logo. The shop has filtered water in the break room so that staff can avoid bottled water. As far as the products Emerald City sells, Kraus sees a positive trend of reducing plastics:  more sandals now use cardboard hangers rather than plastic, smaller items like surf wax use paper wrapping, and more nylon clothing is recycled. Eco-friendliness is a hallmark of surf gear’s marketing. “There is definitely more consumer awareness that being more ecologically sound is what they want, and many companies are taking action on that,” says Kraus.

An avid surfer in Coronado and Imperial Beach, Kraus observes positive trends. More people pick up trash as a matter of course, and improvements at the Mexican border are starting to mitigate the sewage flow from the Tijuana River.

Buying local keeps us out of our cars—reducing Coronado’s carbon footprint and promoting another Emerald Keeper goal. If you’re looking for surf/skate gear, look no further than Emerald City. “This family owned shop was created by surfers, is operated by surfers, caters to surfers, and HAS A PRICE MATCHING POLICY to prove it.” 

Thank you, Emerald City Surf Shop, for helping keep Coronado Emerald Green, Ocean Blue.

Emerald Keepers of the Month: Cindy Elledge and David Brummitt

“Living by the Ferry Landing we see so much trash, and we know it ends up out in the bay. It is something we are tired of seeing, so we decided to start doing something about it.” – Cindy Elledge 

Although you can become an Emerald Keeper by a variety of environmentally friendly pursuits that include composting, recycling, eliminating single-use plastics and going solar, one of the easiest ways is to collect trash whenever and wherever you find it.  Taking the Emerald Keepers pledge (emeraldkeepers.org) has as one of its suggestions picking up at least three pieces of trash every day. 

The Emerald Keepers of the Month for August have certainly taken to heart this suggestion. Living near the Ferry Landing, Coronado residents Cindy Elledge and David Brummitt can be found two to three times a week with bags and pickers in hand collecting trash starting from the public pier outside of Peohe’s, in front of Il Fornaio, along the Broadstone to the Marriott Hotel and sometimes all the way to the Bridge. They begin working at the edges of the walkway where the picking is easy. More finesse is needed when they pull out trash that has gotten stuck and wedged into the rocks below the walkway. Not satisfied with picking three pieces of trash, they can fill as many of 5-6 bags with all sizes of bottles, beer cans, plastic utensils and bags, socks, fishing line, diapers, Styrofoam cups and food containers.

By picking up trash several times a week, they are hoping to encourage others residents and tourists as well as the local businesses to follow their example for a cleaner Coronado and bay. As Elledge explained, “We see so much trash, and we know it ends up out in the bay, so we decided to do something about it.” Brummitt adds, “It’s one little thing anyone can do!” 

Elledge and Brummitt, having grown up in Coronado, were probably first introduced by their mothers, who were friends. They dated in high school and college before taking different personal and career paths. They reconnected about ten years ago through a mutual classmate and have been together ever since. Their interest in the environment and sustainable practices has also come as a result of seeing a variety of documentaries and articles on sea-level-rise, the proliferation of plastics use, green-building materials, and coral reef health.

A side benefit of trash-picking, as stated by Elledge, “Often 2-4 people will thank us for what we are doing.”

Congratuations Emerald Keepers of the Month, Cindy Elledge and David Brummitt, 

Dan'l Steward - Emerald Keeper of the Month

How many days a year do you drive to work? For Dan’l Steward, he can count on one hand the number of times he has driven to work during the past 40 years– ever! As a bicycle commuter, Dan’l figures he has helped the planet by not contributing greenhouse gases or air pollution to the atmosphere and has physically benefitted from his bicycle habit. 

In addition to being a bicycle commuter, Dan’l can be found on the water sculling a few mornings a week before sunrise. He always leaves the beach and parking lot cleaner than he found it. Over the years he has picked up hundreds of beer cans, wine bottles, soda cans, and bags. Dan’l has also cleaned the beach for the past 23 years with the Rotary Club of Coronado. Each month, he fills approximately four big buckets full of trash from the rocks. That’s over 1,100 buckets of trash Dan’l has removed in addition to his daily litter clean up.  

You may recognize Dan’l as the guy who sat in the tree on the 100 block of E Avenue when the City decided to cut down magnificent 100 year-old Eucalyptus trees. His action saved the trees. While the residents lost four trees, the City planted eight additional Eucalyptus trees and designated one of the tallest trees as a heritage tree and the 100 block of E Avenue as the Eucalyptus Tree Street.

On July 1st, Dan’l rode his bicycle one last time to the Naval Amphibious Base where he has spent much of his career with Naval Special Warfare --both as an active duty officer and civilian. It was his final day of work. Over the years he has run tens of thousands of miles on the Navy beach where he picked up trash and saved injured shore birds. On multiple occasions Dan’l has scooped up injured birds (some quite large) in his shirt and run back to sick-bay where a corpsman has helped him untangle the birds from fishing gear and hooks. He is proud that all birds he helped save survived.

In honor of Dan’l Steward’s retirement, please pick up three pieces of trash, ride your bike rather than drive, and admire the giant trees on the 100 Block of E Avenue. Happy retirement and congratulations on being our July Emerald Keeper of the Month! 

Congratulations to our Fourth of July Clean-Up Drawing Winners

Congratulations to our drawing winners: Karen Laedlein, Lennon Fortmann, Diane and Paul Rutherford, Andrea Sager, Michelle Bjorklund and Sarah Jones! Thank you to everyone who sent photos to be entered into our drawing! Everyone won $50 in Coronado Currency. Thank you to all Emerald Keepers who picked up trash following the Fourth of July Weekend.