Group targets ‘plastic plague’

Alicia Robinson

Instead of taking a breather after winning the beach-smoking-ban

battle, local environmentalists are taking on a more ubiquitous foe

-- plastic.

Costa Mesa-based Earth Resource Foundation lobbied, with the help

of students, to get smoking banned on beaches and piers in Newport

Beach, and the City Council passed the ban in August.

Now the environmental group is launching an all-out war on what it

calls “the plastic plague,” and it fired an opening shot at a

symposium last week in Newport Beach on how plastic harms the

environment and how to reduce the use of plastic bags and containers.

The statewide campaign is aimed at reducing “throwaway” plastics

such as shopping bags and water bottles, which are not biodegradable

and can end up in the ocean and on the beach. Plastics have been

linked to infertility and cancer in humans, and sea animals can die

from eating plastic products or becoming trapped by them, said Earth

Resource Foundation Executive Director Stephanie Barger.

Representatives of about 40 environmental groups and

municipalities, mainly in Southern California, came to the symposium.

“The goal of the coalition is, No. 1, education,” Barger said. “We

work on educating people that there are things they can use that are

just as effective [as plastic] that save money.”

One of the foundation’s longtime allies with a stake in the

plastic fight is Newport Harbor High School’s Earth Resource

Foundation club. Member Elle Erpenbeck has been trying to get her

school to switch from plastic water bottles to paper cups at dances.

When the club holds campus clean-ups, she said, “every time, all

we see is tons of plastic bottles and Styrofoam products.”

Plastic products make up a majority of the trash that floats down

the Sana Ana River and lands on beaches and in Newport Harbor, said

Newport Beach General Services Director Dave Niederhaus.

Barger hopes to form 100 small groups of activists to educate

businesses and residents about the dangers of plastic. She also wants

to use municipal and state policies to reduce plastic use, but

Niederhaus doesn’t think the city is likely to ban plastics like it

did with smoking.

“There’s just no alternatives right now that would take their

place,” he said. “Unless something comes along, I don’t see where a

plastic ban by the city would have a significant impact.”

But Barger is undaunted by the enormity of the job of convincing

people to use less plastic.

“A lot of it is awareness. If you realize that if you put a

plastic bag in your recycling bin and it’s not getting recycled, that

may make you think twice about what you’re doing,” Barger said. “This

is really about individuals looking at what they can change in their

personal life.”