From all of us, best wishes for a happy holidays season filled with joy and love!  As we prepare for celebrations, let us all remember our commitment to a world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on people, animals and the environment. Lets make a special effort to reduce our plastic footprint and REFUSE disposable plastics. The change begins with us, and to make it a little easier we have some suggestions.

1. Make Your Own Wrapping Paper

Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in a landfill. Instead, get creative with non-plastic gift wrapping. Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper, or children’s artwork.  You can also use a scarf, an attractive dish towel, a bandanna, or some other useful cloth item, and forgo the plastic tape by tying it on with natural twine or string.

2. Make Your Own Holiday Cards

Have fun with the whole family making original cards that your loved ones will never forget. Use recycled paper or old magazines to collage together unique designs.  Dust off that photo editing software and make a web-based card that is personalized and unique.

3. Buy Organic and Local Foods for Your Holiday Feast

Grab your re-usable shopping bags and support local family farmers who grow sustainable meat and produce. It tastes better and you’ll be doing your part for the planet, too. Then serve this delicious and healthy local organic feast on REAL dishes – not only is it good for the health of the planet, but it’s elegant, too.  If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market during the winter, try a bulk food store that has bulk bins and bring your own reusable produce bags.

4. Find Unique Gifts by supporting Local Artisans

These will be one-of-a-kind gifts for sure. Take your time enjoying local arts and crafts galleries and find a gift that really means something to you, and something your loved one isn’t soon to forget.  If there aren’t any near you, shop Etsy, or other craft sites online, and find sellers that use recyclable packaging material.

5. Buy Plastic-free Gifts, Support a Plastic-free World

We are very picky about what we sell in our online store.  All of the products featured are ones that we personally use.  Help inspire your loved ones to REFUSE single-use plastics in their lives by giving them plastic-free gifts from our online store.

Remember: Donations on Behalf of Someone Require No Packaging At All

Give the greenest gift of all this year and donate to Plastic Pollution Coalition.  Every donation helps. It is the perfect way to buy a gift and do a good deed all at the same time. AND it’s tax deductible. (Whereas most sweaters and fruitcakes are not.)

Wishing you a safe, healthy, and plastic-free holiday season and new year!

Most mass-produced wrapping paper you find in stores is not recyclable and ends up in a landfill. Instead, get creative with non-plastic gift wrapping. Wrap presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper, or children’s artwork.  You can also use a scarf, an attractive dish towel, a bandanna, or some other useful cloth item, and forgo the plastic tape by tying it on with natural twine or string.

2. Make Your Own Holiday Cards

Have fun with the whole family making original cards that your loved ones will never forget. Use recycled paper or old magazines to collage together unique designs.  Dust off that photo editing software and make a web-based card that is personalized and unique.

3. Buy Organic and Local Foods for Your Holiday Feast

Grab your re-usable shopping bags and support local family farmers who grow sustainable meat and produce. It tastes better and you’ll be doing your part for the planet, too. Then serve this delicious and healthy local organic feast on REAL dishes – not only is it good for the health of the planet, but it’s elegant, too.  If you don’t have access to a farmer’s market during the winter, try a bulk food store that has bulk bins and bring your own reusable produce bags.

4. Find Unique Gifts by supporting Local Artisans

These will be one-of-a-kind gifts for sure. Take your time enjoying local arts and crafts galleries and find a gift that really means something to you, and something your loved one isn’t soon to forget.  If there aren’t any near you, shop Etsy, or other craft sites online, and find sellers that use recyclable packaging material.

5. Buy Plastic-free Gifts, Support a Plastic-free World

We are very picky about what we sell in our online store.  All of the products featured are ones that we personally use.  Help inspire your loved ones to REFUSE single-use plastics in their lives by giving them plastic-free gifts from our online store.

Remember: Donations on Behalf of Someone Require No Packaging At All

Give the greenest gift of all this year and donate to Plastic Pollution Coalition.  Every donation helps. It is the perfect way to buy a gift and do a good deed all at the same time. AND it’s tax deductible. (Whereas most sweaters and fruitcakes are not.)

Wishing you a safe, healthy, and plastic-free holiday season and new year!

“Lets all REFUSE disposable plastic”, “We have only one planet, we must come together to keep it healthy!”, “It is time to understand the true cost of our disposable lifestyles” – are just some of the messages people wrote to us. The coalition members report similar impacts from the conference.

Read the press release just out.

The four challenges, delivered at the conclusion of the conference, are listed below. In the days to come, all talks will be made available on the event web site.

To Individuals and Businesses – REFUSE disposable plastics

These objects, created to be used for only a few moments, stay with us forever at a tremendous cost to the planet and the environment.
We challenge all individuals and businesses to end their dependence on disposable plastic. Today.

(Watch Erica Williams deliver the challenge from the floor of TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch)

To manufacturers of plastic products, plastic packaging and virgin resin product

• We challenge you to accept a voluntary cap on non-biodegradable product, and to begin investing resources  into developing a new generation plastic product – plant-based, non-toxic in any stage of its existence, biodegradable.

• We challenge you to own the responsibility of your product till the very end. The packaging you choose to for your products is your responsibility, not the buyer’s.

• We challenge you to rethink design of products – to reduce both carbon footprint and plastic footprint of your goods shipped around the world.

(Watch Wallace “J” Nichols deliver the challenge from the floor of TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch)

To Policy-Makers around the globe

We challenge you to adopt and support policies that support individuals and businesses in their efforts to eliminate disposable plastics. Adopt policies that create economic incentives for businesses who reduce their plastic footprint.

(Watch Leslie Tamminen deliver the challenge from the floor of TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch)

To All Nations Threatened by Plastic Pollution

We challenge you to come together and form a union against the onslaught of plastic to your environment, economic wellbeing and public health.
(Watch H.E.Stuart Beck deliver the challenge from the floor of TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch)

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

Dear Kraft Foods.

Yesterday on a little half mile of beach we found 18 of your little cheese spreaders from your Kraft Handi-Snak cheese packs. The week before we found 21. And 13 before that. Given the sea-patina and bleaching it’s obvious they have been at sea and not left by pick-nickers. Congratulations! you are having a great year given the empirical evidence we’ve found. Isn’t it time you followed the golden rule now that you have been given the free speech rights of a person granted by the constitution.

Peace and love,

Richard and Judith

“The US Supreme Court has struck down a major portion of a 2002 campaign-finance reform law, saying it violates the free-speech right of corporations to engage in public debate of political issues.” Christian Science Monitor

In the late 1880′s corporations were granted “person-hood” essentially giving them as written in the declaration of Independence…”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Although the progressive movement has railed against this idea of corporate “person-hood” by 2010 this genie is well free of the bottle. It’s a fool’s errand to fight against a wave that has long ago crashed ashore.

What to do?

While I am not a “believer” or a keeper of religious ritual, as an artist I feel myself to be a part of the 30,000-year continuum of humans engaged with the imaginal life. I feel engaged with the essence of human spirituality. Yet, in an age when religious fundamentalism is causing such havoc, it is treading on very thin ice to evoke any kind of religiosity. But, that said….

During the time of Jesus, Rabbi Hillel, when challenged by a gentile, who posed a question, as a taunt, saying, “I will convert, Rabbi, if you can explain your thinking while standing on one leg.” “Easy”, says Hillel, “Do to others as you would have others do to you. All our texts are commentary on that idea, now go and study them.” This simple moral code is the core teaching of all major religions on this planet.

There is no fighting the corporate nature of our global society, but we can insist that if corporations are to enjoy the rights of person-hood, it is time for them to adopt the one true moral compass of existence, “Do to others, what you have them do to you.”

~ Richard Lang

——————–

Artists Judith Selby and Richard Lang have been collecting plastic pollution from Kehoe Beach for 10 years and making art with it. More information on their Website http://www.beachplastic.com/

On every visit since the introduction of Kraft Handi-Snak cheese packs Richard and Judith have found these single use plastic spreaders washed up on the sand. These rectangular pieces of purple plastic last hundreds of years in the environment.

Gorgeous Kehoe Beach is located 40 miles north of San Francisco in Point Reyes National Seashore . See Kehoe Beach on BlooSee satellite imagery here.

You can contact Kraft Foods customer service by phone at 1-877-535-5666, or in writing by clicking the happy snack logo. Tell them how happy you are.