Saturday, March 27, 2010

Day 108 - March 26

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA
trash collected for 20 minutes
1.7 pounds
429.1 pounds total
There is a huge plastic bottle manufacturing plant in Corpus Cristi Texas called Flint Hills. In that city, the birth defect rate is 84% higher than the state average. I learned this from watching TAPPED. If you want to find out more, you can now buy it on DVD by visiting their website, and watch tons of free trailers too.

The fact I mentioned above is significant because when you buy #1 PET labeled plastic drinking bottle, you are not only ingesting carcinogens from the benzene and other chemicals that leech into your beverage, but you are contributing to the noxious gas emissions from the plant that is making those bottles, and poisoning the communities that live around their factories.
I've mentioned before that styrafoam is banned as a take out container in Santa Monica. But our city is at the end of the pipe, so to speak, meaning that the Santa Monica Bay receives all the trash from the storm drains for the entire city of Los Angeles where styrafoam is not banned.

This is a picture of what to me looked like beak marks and bird "bites" from porbably some foraging sea gull who now has a belly full of this stuff. But they aren't the only animals eating styrafoam. Check out 5Gyres blog to see a post about how some folks out to dinner, found stryafoam bits ingested in their clams. Wow.
I met a woman by phone yesterday, Sophie, when I was with Team Marine at SAMO high from

Go to their site to check out their trailer, and sign up for an assembly on climate change to come to your school!

"ACE is a national nonprofit dedicated to educating America's high school students about the science behind climate change and inspiring them to do something about it—while having fun along the way. Founded in 2008, ACE is headquartered in Oakland, California, with offices in New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, New England, Denver, Atlanta, Houston and Austin."