Heal the Bay Blog

Do you think the City of L.A. should be a leader on the single-use bag issue instead of the last to the finish line? Do you want to end the scourge of plastic bag pollution in your neighborhood, local city streets and worse of all, on our local beaches? Then join us for a rally at City Hall to urge L.A.’s City Council to finally adopt its long-proposed plastic bag ban.

Please join Heal the Bay and other concerned citizens at Wednesday’s City Council meeting, where they will be voting on the ordinance to ban single-use shopping bags.

Your voice will be key in supporting the passage of this ordinance, which will help reduce local trash and marine debris and set a precedent for the statewide ban.

What: Rally to support L.A. City Council’s Bag Ban

When: May 23, 2012 9 a.m. Rally; followed by 10 a.m. City Council Meeting (bring I.D. if you plan to attend the meeting)

Where:  John Ferraro Council Chamber,  Room 340, City Hall,  200 North Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Who is attending: Concerned citizens, elected officials, environmental champions, business leaders, students and veterans groups

If you can join us for this critical meeting, please contact Natalie Burdick to RSVP so we can update you with the latest details and provide you with rally materials. Download the flyer.

WEAR BLUE TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT

Think about whom you represent…your family? Your community group? Your business? Yourself?…then come out to make your voice heard.

Learn more.

The answer is blowing in the wind for oceanographers who have discovered that gusts of wind push plastic debris below the surface of the water, rendering previous data gathered by skimming the surface inaccurate.

After taking samples of water at a depth of 16 feet (5 meters), Giora Proskurowski, a researcher at the University of Washington, discovered that wind was pushing the lightweight plastic particles below the surface. That meant that decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris in the oceans, Proskurowski said.

Reporting in the journal of Geophysical Research Letters this month, Proskurowski and co-lead author Tobias Kukulka, University of Delaware, said that data collected from just the surface of the water commonly underestimates the total amount of plastic in the water by an average factor of 2.5. In high winds the volume of plastic could be underestimated by a factor of 27.

“That really puts a lot of error into the compilation of the data set,” Proskurowski said. The paper also detailed a new model that researchers and environmental groups can use to collect more accurate data in the future.

The team plans to publish a “recipe” that simplifies the model so that a wide range of groups investigating ocean plastics, including those that aren’t oceanographers, can easily use the model. Following the recipe, which is available now by request, might encourage some consistency among the studies, he said.

“On this topic, what science needs to be geared toward is building confidence that scientists have solid numbers and that policy makers aren’t making judgments based on CNN reports,” he said. Descriptions of the so-called great Pacific garbage patch in widespread news reports may have led many people to imagine a giant, dense island of garbage while in fact the patch is made up of widely dispersed, millimeter-size pieces of debris, he said.

Plastic waste in the oceans is a concern because of the impact it might have on the environment. For instance, when fish ingest the plastics, it may degrade their liver functions. In addition, the particles make nice homes for bacteria and algae, which are then transported along with the particles into different regions of the ocean where they may be invasive and cause problems.

Read more about Heal the Bay’s work to reduce marine debris.

To support a ban on single-use plastic bags in the city of Los Angeles, take action.