Charlie Eckberg, UCSB Alumni, with speakers and student leaders

It seems appropriate that UC Santa Barbara, home of one of the oldest environmental studies programs in the nation, would also be home to an incredibly active group of students working to release their community from dependence on disposable plastics. UCSB students will serve as a model for campuses around the world, as members of the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s new Plastic Free Campuses program.

The Plastic Free Campuses program will identify student groups at schools around the world that are responding to the multiple threats of plastic pollution and embracing sustainability by taking steps to measurably reduce their campuses plastic footprint. At UCSB, a variety of student groups have come together to call themselves the UCSB Plastic Pollution Coalition. As a member of the Plastic Free Campuses , the UCSB-PPC joins schools in Peru, Colombia, Japan, South Australia, and Spain that have made a commitment to reducing their plastic footprint. To register, a school needs only to have an existing initiative addressing the issues of plastic pollution on campus or in the community.

PPC Executive Director Daniella Russo with UCSB seniors, Ally Gialketsis and Matt Gilliland

Last week, students at UC Santa Barbara organized a week of activities as part of the annual ‘UCSB Reads’ program, which “encourages a common reading and intellectual experience for the community,” according to the specially printed forward of the book “Moby Duck”, by Donovan Hohn, 2,500 copies of which were distributed for free at the UCSB library last week.

The community focus on plastic pollution is in part, recognition of the work being done by several campus organizations that have joined efforts in their work to bring the issue to the fore of discussion on campus and in the community of Santa Barbara. The group, which calls itself the UCSB Plastic Pollution Coalition, is formed in part by the Associated Students Coastal Fund, CALPIRG, the Isla Vista Surfrider Foundation, and the UCSB Environmental Affairs Board. Additionally, the UCSB Reads program is supported by academic departments across many disciplines at UCSB, as well as several community partners.

It is this kind of cross-disciplinary, student led effort that PPC seeks to support with the global Plastic Free Campuses program. Why students? Matt Gilliland, UCSB senior and Oceans Campaign Coordinator for CALPIRG UCSB, says, “The Santa Barbara community is full of concerned citizens, but they need something to mobilize around. A force of young students that are committed to building a better community will spark a movement. We’ll lead by demonstration – getting plastics off of our campus to show that it can be done.”

Students helped build a Rubber Ducky with local org, Art from Scrap

In addition to the distribution of 2,500 copies of “Moby Duck,” last weeks activities included a visit by the author, lectures and panels related to the book, and the building of a giant rubber ducky out of ocean trash, organized by the local organization Art from Scrap. The week concluded with a press conference highlighting campus and local community efforts to deal with plastic pollution. PPC’s Executive Director, Daniella Russo, took the opportunity to announce the official launch of the global Plastic Free Campuses program.

Kathleen Reddington, of the Carpinteria City council, spoke about her own communities success in banning plastic bags, commended the students of UCSB for taking this on, and encouraged the entire UC system to follow the trend. Last semester, UCSB student volunteers collected over 3,000 signatures from the community in support of plastic bag bans on campus and in the community of Santa Barbara, their goal is to have 6,000 signatures by the end of the school year.

“I want to be able to tangibly see the effects of my work,” says Ryan McInerney, a senior in Environmental Studies and Political Science, who joined student volunteers in helping to gather signatures on Friday. Ryan has researched and written about the issues of plastic pollution, but is happy to be outside, engaging peers in the issue, and working to take action.

In the coming months, UCSB will host a variety of activities on campus, including ‘Day without a bag’, a reusable bag swap, and a sustainable vendors fair. In addition, UCSB is working on installing hydration stations across the campus. Two pilot stations have been installed, and a proposal for 40 more across the campus is being developed.

“The PPC provides an outlet for us to show the rest of the world that a plastic-free campus is a very tangible goal.” Says Ally Gialketsis, a senior at UCSB and Plastics Coordinator and Co-chair for Isla Vista Surfrider Foundation. “Students are driven and motivated by the issue of plastic pollution, and the PPC is the best way for students to put that energy towards their goal in the most efficient and constructive way possible.”

For more information about the Plastic Pollution Coalition’s Plastic Free Campuses program, visit http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/projects/plastic-free-campuses/

See more photos from the event on facebook (and join the PPC page while your at it!)

See a VIDEO of the event, produced by UCSB’s Bottom Line.

Other coverage of the UCSB Reads week:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-spiegl/plastic-free-campuses_b_1232904.html

http://www.celsias.com/article/university-california-takes-plastic-problem/

http://www.dailynexus.com/2012-01-10/yearly-free-book-program-tackles-plastic-pollution/

http://eco-runner.blogspot.com/2012/01/university-of-california-takes-on.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eco-runner+%28Eco-Runner%29

http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=78641

You know the obvious reason why plastic bags blow. They are light-weight wind socks that catch the air to travel greats distances and heights. Found blowing across every freeway, plastic bags have become known as Urban Tumbleweeds. Plastic bags clog our storm drains, and litter our shores. In the oceans they become mock jellyfish, endangering the sea life that depends on real jellyfish for nutrition. The list below takes us beyond the obvious and literal reasons why plastic bags blow to some facts that might surprise you. How many of these facts did you know?

1. Californians use 19 million single-use plastic bags a year, amounting to 147,000 tons of unnecessary waste that doesn’t biodegrade. A single reusable bag, on the other hand, can last for years and be used thousands of times before it enters the waste stream or is recycled.

2. Single-use plastic bags are nearly impossible to recycle. Despite all the lobbying by the plastics industry to push recycling of plastic bags, the rate is less than 5% in California. Because they are thin and lightweight, recycling plastic bags is difficult and the return on the effort to recycle them is minimal or non-existent. In Los Angeles County, over 90% of the bags collected in municipalities surveyed ended up being shipped to a landfill rather than recycled, due to contamination from food or pet waste, and the tendency of plastic bags to jam recycling machinery.

3. The typical plastic grocery bag is manufactured from polyethylene, a byproduct of petroleum and natural gas – both nonrenewable resources that create more greenhouse gases and increase our dependency on foreign oil. The energy used to make about 9 plastic bags is equivalent to the energy it takes to drive a car one kilometer, or more than half a mile!

4. There are no free plastic bags! The cost of plastic bags is 3-5 cents buried in the purchase price of your groceries or consumer goods. Then, there is the clean up cost for plastic bag pollution… One study found that the cost of cleanup amounts to 17 cents a bag, that translates to the average taxpayer paying about $88 per year on plastic bag waste – What a waste!

5. What if every disposable plastic bag you used this year was still in your car? That would be around 600 bags per shopper in your family. These bags are designed to be used once and thrown away, but where do they go? The majority end up in our landfills, choke our rivers and storm drain systems, and make their way to the ocean where they threaten marine life.

6. According to The Wall Street Journal, Americans go through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion.)

7. During a three-hour clean up on International Coastal Cleanup Day in 2008, plastic bags were the second most common trash item found on beaches, lakes and streams, accounting for 1.4 million bags!

8. Discarded plastic bags are so common in our environment that in a catch basin cleanup of along the Los Angeles River, plastic film and bags were 43% percent of all trash collected!

9. Plastic bags have been documented in the remains of birds, ocean mammals, fish, turtles, and even camels.

10. California taxpayers spend $25 million just to collect and landfill plastic bag waste each year. That figure does not include external costs, e.g., resource extraction and depletion, quality of life issues, economic loss due to plastic bag litter and loss of wildlife due to plastic bag consumption.

China, Mexico City and at least 40 countries and municipalities around the world have banned plastic bags (representing at least 25% of the world’s population). In 2008, the Ocean Protection Council called upon the California Legislature to ban or place consumer fees on commonly littered items, including plastic single-use bags. The United Nations Environmental Programme Secretariat has also called for a worldwide ban of plastic bags. The California Senate is currently considering a single-use plastic bag ban.

For more information and to send a letter supporting the California Single-Use Bag Reduction Act (AB 1998) please see:

http://www.healthebay.org/actionalerts/ab1998/default.asp

Just blocks from the Santa Monica shore on a beautiful beach day, sat a very serious panel of experts in suits.  The panelists were California, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica government officials tasked with managing the plastic pollution that flows daily in every waterway to the sea along California’s great coast.   Each had their own photographs, facts and statistics to prove the same point:  plastic pollution is extremely difficult to control, terribly costly, and there is a desperate need for legislation to stop the overwhelming flow of plastic pollution.

Several panelists were veterans of previous legislative battles to control plastic pollution, a few of these successful like AB 258, California’s Nurdle  Control Law that establishes best management practices for manufacturers and transporters of preproduction plastic pellets .  Nurdles are a plague to sea creatures who mistake the fish egg sized spheres as food.

But all of the panelists were in active service in an ongoing battle against American Chemistry Council (ACC) lobbyists who have formed groups such as “Save the Plastic Bag,”  successfully lobbied for California state legislation banning a fee on plastic bags, and repeatedly sued municipalities that have tried to ban plastic bags, with very creative use of The California Environmental Quality Act.  These government officials and a legislative analyst from the Santa Monica based nonprofit Heal the Bay were unified in their belief that legislative solutions are required for the worst offending single use plastics that plague our coast, chief amongst these, the plastic bag.  Agreeing that there is no way to recycle our way out of the plastic pollution problem in general, the panelists specifically rejected recycling as a reasonable solution for plastic bags.  Plastic bags are light- weight and often take flight making them hard to control. Plastic bags are often contaminated with food and other substances making them poor candidates for recycling.  In addition, they jam the recycling equipment, and do not produce valuable recycled content.  In fact, plastic bags cost more to recycle than they are worth.  These reasons may account for the fact that less than 5 % of plastic bags are recycled.

Backed into a corner by the ACC lobbyists who have spent great amounts of money to protect the plastic bag, the panelists spoke of a new strategy to protect our coast and sea life from the billowing, blowing plastic bags that jam the storm water catch basins and mimic sea jellies to unsuspecting ocean feeders.  Because the ACC was successful in banning fees on bags, new legislation is proposed that will simply ban plastic bags.  Because the ACC has successfully challenged bans on plastic bags with demands under The California Environmental Quality Act for environmental impact reports to show the environmental costs of relying on paper bags, the newly proposed  legislation bans BOTH plastic and paper bags.  What are the chances for such a law to survive the political process that has doomed other attempts to control plastic bags?

Julia Brownlee, Democratic State Assembly Member representing coastal Santa Monica and author of Assembly Bill 1998 to impose a ban on single-use bags, believes her bill has a better shot than previous attempts.  For the first time, the California Grocers Association is on board to cooperate on the bill.  Single-use bags cost money that they have to pass on in the costs of food, and in tough economic times cutting costs is good for business. Also, with prominent publications like Time Magazine reporting on “The Perils of Plastic,” scientific information and reporting about the harms of plastic pollution is hard to ignore.

“Plastic Pollution is injuring and killing marine life, spoiling our beaches and costing Californians tens of millions of dollars to clean up every year.  Now is the time to drastically reduce this pollution by switching to reusable bags. “

“Paper bags are not a good alternative to plastic.  Paper bags contribute to deforestation, air pollution and warehouse wastes from the manufacturing process.  With just a little foresight, we can change our nasty bag habit by making a small investment in reusable bags and by bringing them with us when we enter a store.  That is why I’m carrying Assembly Bill 1998, which will impose a ban on single-use bags…”

Watch our website for more information on AB 1998 as it develops.  We will be asking for your support for this legislation that may be a model for the rest of this nation, and for many others.

The panelists were:

• Jonathan Bishop: Chief Deputy Director State Water Resources Control Board
• Richard Bloom: Santa Monica City Council Member, California Coastal Commissioner, and Chair Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission
• Sonia Diaz: Legislative Analyst for Heal the Bay
• James Bassett:  UCLA Professor of Business Sustainability
• Dean Kubani: Senior Environmental Analyst, City of Santa Monica Office of Sustainability and the Environment
• Coby Skye:  Civil Engineer, Los Angles County Department of Public Works

Costa Salvaje / Wild Coast is a nonprofit on both sides of the Mexican-US border and their mission is to protect and preserve coastal ecosystems and wildlife in the Californias (US state of California and Baja California, Mexico) and in Latin America by

• Building grassroots support
• Conducting media campaigns
• Establishing protected areas

One of their main areas of concern is the Tijuana Valley watershed, which is a major contributor to the plastic pollution that contaminates the ocean and beaches in the border area and beyond.

Please check out their websites at Costa Salvaje / Wild Coast and also the videos on their terrific YouTube channel, and support their work.  We are excited to start exploring synergies between Costa Salvaje / Wild Coast and the work of other members of the coalition.

Bienvenidos! Welcome! Onward! Adelante!

PS: with our new friends comes the invaluable help of several Mexican celebrities, including El Hijo del Santo, a larger than life character in Mexico and beyond. Enjoy the video!