Victory for our Beaches and Oceans in LA County!

                                              Laurie Gould of Pasadena dresses up at as Plastic Bag Monster, Photo by Gary Friedman

Today, on November 16th, 2010, history was made as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 to ban single-use plastic bags in LA County. This ban will cover about 1.1 million residents of the area, making LA County the biggest municipality to ban the plastic bag in the country! Stores in the affected area will be prohibited from providing single-use plastic bags to its customers, but have to the option to provide paper bags for 10 cents each. Plastic bags for produce and meat will not be banned for sanitary reasons. This ban will severely reduce the SIX BILLION plastic bags per year that are currently being used by the county. Team Marine is so proud of the board for supporting the ban, and hope that Santa Monica officials will follow.

As an update, the City of Santa Monica has postponed their decision on banning plastic bags even further. Their last proposed date was November 23rd, which was announced after Team Marine's march.

Team Marine as Mentors!

 

                                Kou Collins talking to a group of environmentally-minded students at USC

Team Marine was given the opportunity to assist student teams participating this year's QuikScience Challenge, a collaboration between QuikSilver and the USC Wrigley Institute, on Thursday November 11th, 2010. We brought our fleet of plastic monster costumes, as well as educational material involving sustainability, anthropogenic impacts, water purification, etc. Team Marine has been quite successful in past QuikScience Challenges, and decided to a year off from competing to mentor other environmental teams. Thank you to the 100+ students who came out for the event, as well as our partners over at QuikScience.

 Team Marine's fleet of PLASTIC BAG MONSTERS! 

(from left to right; Patricio, Maykel, Nicho, Echo, and Alexis)