Students embark on alternative spring break to save California’s ban on plastic bags
The November election is still months away but the battle over plastic bags is already heating up. There’s a referendum on the ballot in California, it’s one that would repeal the statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. But a group of college students are on a mission to convince voters that the ban should stand.
Student leaders from the University of California are on a completely different kind of spring break. Instead of cold ones on the beach, they’re traveling to 6 different California cities, drumming up support for the ‘Save the Bag-Ban’ campaign.
The students belong to CALPIRG (California Student Public Interest Research Group) and one of those 6 stops was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
“We feel Monterey has been a really progressive city in regards to banning the single use plastic bags and we want to make the word known that there are students who care about these issues as well,” said Argie Hill, a junior at UC Berkeley and CALPIRG’s Event Organizer.
Hill and the rest of the CALPIRG group want Californians to know what’s at stake come November.
“Because we’re small groups, we’re grassroots organizations, we can’t contend with the amount of money out of state plastic companies have pledged to support overturning our bag ban,” said Hill.
Latise LaFeir of the Monterey Bay Aquarium said when it comes to the younger generation, environmental choices are fast becoming a lifestyle.
“So it really inspires to me to see that it’s becoming so important to the next generation that it will become the status quo,’ said LaFeir.
Plastic pollution has become a problem nationwide. Paul Michel with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary finds that locally, the more you look into the Monterey Bay, the more plastic you’ll find.
“Not only in terms of destruction of the habitat, but also in terms of ingestion and entanglement with marine wildlife,” said Michel.
And if no dramatic efforts are made to stop plastic pollution, the ocean will have more plastic in it than fish by the year 2050. And people trying to get the word out about the dangers of too much plastic hope the message will spread.
“Talk to your family members, talk to your close friends, and say ‘hey, did you know there’s so much plastics in the ocean?’, because maybe they don’t know, and you can be that small change to make a big difference in the world,” said Hill.
