Welcome to Sustainable Del Rey Oaks
Sustainable Del Rey Oaks was launched in 2019 as Mayor Alison Kerr’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability, steered by individuals who sought to create a more sustainable future by fostering environmental and community-building initiatives for the health, safety, and resilience of our residents, city, and region.
Later that year, SDRO was happy to join CSMC as their newest local area group (LAG). We continue to be made up of volunteers with a variety of talents who are dedicated to protecting the environment and educating others about sustainable practices, in collaboration with other like-minded groups.
Ongoing Activities
SDRO meets the second Thursday of the month at 6 p.m. via Zoom. All are welcome! Please contact us at sustainabledelreyoakscsmc@gmail.com so that we may send you our meeting information..
Our Butterfly Garden (see below) is thriving and looking great. Stop by and take a look! And if you’d like to help us maintain this special spot, please join us the second Saturday of each month from 10 to noon. There’s always plenty to do, and good company to be had.
Other Action Areas
- Reducing single-use plastics at city events
- Researching, promoting, and doing outreach for a Del Rey Oaks single-use plastic ordinance
- Presenting public education and sustainable information at our annual Earth Day celebration and other city-wide events
- Working to help keep our city and waterways clean by performing regular trash cleanups
- Focusing on the ecological health of our open spaces through the ongoing eradication of French broom, an invasive plant found in Work Memorial Park
Earth-Friendly Households
Download our Earth-Friendly Households Flyer and Checklist (a project of Lance Wright from Sustainable Pacific Grove) and make your home more earth-friendly. Once you have at least 55 items checked off, you will become a Certified Earth-Friendly Household, and we will award you with an earth flag or sticker you can prominently display on your recycle bin. An easy and effective way to honor our planet!
Butterfly Garden
The Butterfly Garden, located behind Church of the Oaks and next to the tennis courts, is a demonstration project for integrated pest management, created through a grant from the Monterey Regional Stormwater Management Program. It features six large, decorated planter boxes full of exuberant native plants, whose flowers attract butterflies, hummingbirds, and other pollinators. The site also hosts a barn owl box, an example of natural rodent control without using harmful poisons. The box was donated to SDRO by the Monterey Peninsula Waste Management District, which itself has ten similar boxes with many barn owl family residents. (Pictured below: our talented painter and owl box artist Raven Cook)
Friends of Arroyo del Rey
Arroyo del Rey is the perennial creek that meanders through the city of Del Rey Oaks—along Highway 218 past the Frog Pond, through Del Rey and Work Memorial Parks, and continuing into Laguna Grande, Lake Roberts, and finally the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The Friends of Arroyo del Rey are gathering existing information about the creek and watershed and plan to work with community members, local partners, and educators to study, protect, and restore the riparian habitat of Del Rey Oaks. With a generous grant from the Sierra Club, in 2021 we funded a habitat analysis of the creek to help us better understand and manage the area. (You can access these documents here and here.) Can we interest you in joining us?