Newspaper: Express Gay News
Title: Desmond Child fan can’t get enough
Author/Reporter: Adinda Veltrop
Date: Thursday, June 19, 2008

Miami beaches are cleaner after “Big Sweep” weekend

Dear Editor,

I am writing to give you a follow-up on the Environmental Coalition of Miami Beach’s (ECOMB) beach clean-up competition called “The Big Sweep” which took place this past Saturday on Miami Beach (“Green gay warriors,” Express June 12).  Although the clean-up started bright and early (at 8am when some of your readers were just getting home from after-hours), I was pleased to see such a good turn out from LGBT- community.  This was especially surprising because the majority of the nightclubs were hosting events for an AIDS fundraiser this weekend which did not allow time for the gay bars to put teams together. Nevertheless, I am pleased to report that the event was a huge success! We had almost 300 volunteers throughout the day working and competing to make Miami Beach cleaner and greener for all of our residents and visitors.  Among the corporations that put together teams, two really stood out.  The Fontainebleau Hotel assembled a team of 80-plus people who swept across Miami Beach like an invading army.  In addition, Royal Caribbean also put together a large team thatcollected many bags of garbage and debris.  Not surprisingly, both corporations walked away with prizes. ECOMB hopes to make “The Big Sweep” a regular occurrence and next time we’ll be looking to LGBT bar owners including Halo, Twist and Score to assemble “green teams” (note:  maybe we should schedule in the afternoon).  Next time, we hope more members of our community get involved and show the City that we are on the forefront fighting the battle against litter and educating our residents on the virtues of a sustainable environment.  Also, maybe we should add music and fashion and turn it into a cleaning circuit party……we’ll see.

Michael Gongora
Chairman, ECOMB
a/k/a Green Gay Warrior