The 11th annual Creek to Bay clean-up gets underway Saturday in San Diego County.
More than 6,000 volunteers will fan out along the county's waterways, scouring the shorelines for discarded garbage.
Volunteers pick up everything from cigarette butts to shopping carts to used tires. Last year, teams picked up about 75 tons of garbage, but the amount of garbage is going down.
"We have had more volunteers engaged, so you would think that with more bodies comes more trash. But over the last three years, we've seen about a 15 percent decrease in the amount of trash picked up at these countywide clean-ups," said Morgan Justice-Black of I Love A Clean San Diego.
That could be a sign that people are better about caring for the environment, said Justice-Black, who added that picking up the trash keeps it from fouling waterways and, eventually, the ocean.
