Tag: featured

How are other California cities reducing single use plastic food ware?

By Nancy Sanchez

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Approximately 4.7% of Santa Monica’s greenhouse gas emissions come from landfill waste. In Santa Monica and throughout California, the movement to reduce waste and carbon emissions from single-use plastics is gaining momentum. 

Senate Bill 54 requires that by 2032, all packaging in California needs to be recyclable or compostable. Plastic production would be reduced by 25%, and 65% of packaging would need to be recycled after use. 

In Oakland, five hundred businesses are switching to reusables through programs like ReThink Disposable. This program helps restaurants find the best strategy for them and provides education and grant opportunities. In LA County they are moving forward to eliminate single-use plastics at local restaurants through 1) Banning single-use food service ware (examples: utensils, plates, cups, etc) that aren’t compostable or recyclable, 2) Banning expanded polystyrene (example: styrofoam) products, 3) Requiring reusables for full service, dine-in eateries (reusablela). The legislation will help small businesses while permanent eateries will have 1 year to reach compliance. Reusable LA shows how support for restaurants can help encourage the switch.  CASM sees reusables as a critical climate strategy throughout our community and economy. 

As a leader in sustainability and as an ocean community, Santa Monica adopted waste ordinances that also protect marine ecosystems and clean water. Acknowledging that littered plastic foodware harms Santa Monica’s coastal environment, we adopted ordinances that promote marine degradable food service ware. We also have rules to eliminate single-use carry-out bags and provisions for reducing the amount of waste that comes with foods ordered online.  Specifically, Santa Monica requires that food service ware be requested when ordering online. Delivery companies such as Doordash and Uber Eats need to make it easier to request foodware, and also make it clear on the app that these will not be provided unless requested. Since bio-plastics are NOT marine-degradable, they are not permitted under the Santa Monica ordinance. Exemptions exist for beverage cup lids at this time.  However, with many new options now available, we hope that can soon be changed. Fines are possible for restaurants that do not comply. There are also exemptions for hardship.

CASM conducted a study analyzing the foodware provided by fast-food chain restaurants during food delivery.  We found that many complied partially, and a few hardly followed the local ordinances. We are hoping all local restaurants can become heroes for zero waste. CASM is working on outreach to notify local Santa Monica food establishments of changes they can make to their foodware to become heroes and we encourage more local enforcement.

What actions can you take?  How can you help? 

You can join CASM’s restaurant outreach volunteers. We want people willing to talk to restaurants as customers interested in seeing those establishments commit to a more climate-friendly waste reduction strategy.  If you are interested, contact . 

Articles used:

https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2023/12/20/oakland-california-passes-new-reusable-foodware-policy

https://oaklandnorth.net/2023/11/30/oakland-city-council-considers-banning-plastic-plates-cups-forks

This large California city is poised to ban single-use plastics (msn.com)

New California plastics law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom | CNN

In the Fall of 2023, Climate Action Santa Monica’s Climate Job Corps assisted in outreach for LADOT’s Westside Mobility Projects.  The program is a plan to enhance safety and connectivity for four secondary bikeway corridors connecting Westside neighborhoods and adjacent cities with the goal of making bicycling more comfortable for riders of all ages and abilities.  

CJC members Mario Melgarejo and Nancy Sanchez worked together to spread the word and gather community input for the potential bikeway improvements.  Their strategies included posting on Social Media, attending in-person events (farmers markets, flyer distributions, etc), and distributing information electronically via email, newsletter, and on CASM’s website.  These outreach activities gave the CJC team opportunities to grow their skills of communication, team work, event planning, and data collection while promoting climate-friendly mobility.  

The Westside Mobility Projects will be important to an area in critical need of safer walking and biking infrastructure. With some of the most desirable weather in the country and relatively flat topography, the Westside has the potential to become one of the best biking areas in the Country. But many of Santa Monica’s bike routes stop at city limits, and the continuing paths in the City of LA are often less safe or non-existent. Improving the safety of bike routes in LA’s Westside will complement and extend Santa Monica’s plans for a robust citywide bike network.  This project will make an important contribution to promoting climate-friendly mobility, connecting communities and making our streets safer for everyone.

By Jasmine Contreras

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As we collectively strive for a more sustainable and environmentally conscious future, we would like to draw your attention to a problematic and alarming issue right here in Santa Monica – the impact of beach grooming on our environment and its relevance to climate.

Beach grooming involves diesel-powered, tractor-style vehicles regularly driving up and down the coast, raking and flattening miles of sandy shores during the early morning hours. This practice has implications for carbon emissions, plant growth, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and resilience against rising sea levels.

Last fall, CASM studied some of the effects of beach grooming. In addition to altering the beach habitat and removing trash, the process also shreds beach trash into smaller pieces, which are harder to remove. As these vehicles traverse hundreds of miles, they also emit carbon. The sandy shores of Santa Monica, artificially expanded decades ago with millions of cubic feet of imported sand, are nonetheless a vital habitat for various wildlife, including the endangered snowy plover, which nests here in Santa Monica.

Beach grooming is carried out primarily for aesthetic reasons, with a prevailing belief that beaches should be wide, flat, and devoid of vegetation. Additionally, it serves the essential purposes of trash removal and the ability to drive trucks on the beach for emergency management.  However, these well-intentioned purposes have unintended consequences, adversely impacting wildlife and the natural environment.

Images captured immediately after grooming show minimal large trash pieces but reveal a startling truth – the shredding of large items into smaller, more challenging-to-manage fragments. It’s a call to action for Santa Monica, our government, and the community.

The exciting and successful establishment of native plants on the beach also presents an excellent opportunity to think of our beach dunes as living climate resources.  A living dunes ecosystem can sequester carbon, provide habitat for wildlife, make our community more resilient to rising sea levels and storm surges, and offer new types of nature-based recreation and tourism.  Thriving habitats can co-exist with other uses. 

It’s time to start a dialogue on beach grooming practices.  As a leader in environmental innovation, Santa Monica can pioneer needed change globally; grooming affects beaches worldwide.  What if we could employ smaller zero-emission vehicles when needed and promote human stewardship?  Let’s promote education, outreach, and policy changes that are future-oriented and climate-smart.

For a comprehensive understanding of our study, please watch this presentation on the study by CASM’s Jasmine Contreras.  You will also learn about the Dunes Restoration project led by The Bay Foundation and the City of Santa Monica. 

Join CASM February 9, 2024 for our King Tides Event! 

Join the 3rd Annual King Tides Event with CASM February 9, 2024 at 7:30am to 9:30am with special guest Bill Selby! We will be taking photos of the King Tides and submitting them on the California Coastal Commission! RSVP Below:

Join us Sunday, December 17 at 9am as we ride along the Santa Monica Beach bicycle trail. We will explore the natural forces and processes that have shaped and are still shaping our coastline. It is a magical science mystery tour that spans millions of years and includes stories about how geology, coastal geomorphology, weather and climate, oceanography, and human impacts have conspired to sculpt some of southern California’s most iconic landscapes.

Join author and Earth Science Professor Emeritus William Selby on this bring or rent your own bike event that should last about three hours.

We start at 9am next to Hot Dog on a Stick near the original Muscle Beach, just “south” of SM Pier. Bring friends, family, and questions to this Everything You Wanted to Know about Nature and Landscapes on the Santa Monica Coast but were Afraid to Ask adventure.  

Climate Literacy in Schools

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By Nancy Sanchez

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On November 2nd Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Board (SMMUSD) approved a climate literacy resolution proposed by Santa Monica High School’s Team Marine. The resolution by Team Marine requested “age appropriate discussions” in elementary schools while advancing the criteria for deeper discussions of climate issues in secondary schools, as quoted by Santa Monica Daily Press. The Team Marine proposal focused on allowing District teachers to provide hands-on learning with students by having guest speakers, environmental films and various research projects. By students gaining an environmental education in school they can create their own climate actions in their lives and their community.

Past CASM Climate Corps member Maya Williams, who is also a part of  Team Marine, participated in the push for Climate Literacy. She had this to say about Climate Literacy and future plans. “I think for a long time, climate literacy has been somewhat neglected within the climate movement because of the lack of instant gratification: we can calculate and track the immediate changes in emissions when a corporation or entity shifts from fossil fuels to clean energy, for example, but it’s a bit more difficult to measure the impact of educating our students on the topic of the climate crisis and the subsequent ripple effects of their climate education. But knowledge is power, and as a member of Team Marine, I’ve consistently been able to see how students that are informed on the climate crisis tend to be more motivated to take climate action and become civically engaged citizens out of concern for their communities and their planet. Nobody is going to get involved in a cause that they know nothing about, and so if our goal is to have students and young people that are more engaged not only in the climate movement, but also in the fight to create a better world, we need to start allocating the time and resources that are necessary to make climate literacy a priority in our classrooms.”

Nancy Sanchez, one of CASM’s Climate Job Corps fellows, offers this perspective: “As an environmental anthropologist, I believe climate literacy in schools is essential for students to understand their relationship to nature by addressing hands-on learning that can be applied to the world around them. Students should have an understanding of basic climate concepts and apply them to their own lives. This is just the first step of many to educate the current and next generation to mitigate climate change.”

The City of Santa Monica wants your input! The City has created a simple, interactive tool to collect feedback about improvements to Broadway. The comment period is open from October 17 to November 27, 2023. Use the following link Broadway Protected Bike Lane Project – Feedback Map to submit your input.

This project will see improvements to the bike lanes on Broadway between 5th and 26th streets. It is included in the 2020 Bike Action Plan Amendment’s five-year vision, and intersects with many other protected bikeways included in the plan.

CASM recognizes the importance of safe and extensive bike infrastructure, as well as any measures that helps make the city less dependent on automobiles. The city’s 2022 greenhouse gas inventory showed that 68.5% of carbon emissions in Santa Monica come from vehicles. While total vehicle emissions fell by 19% between 2019 and 2022, the City still has a long way to go to achieve an 80% reduction (below 1990 levels) in total greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, as outlined in the Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. As of 2022, the city has achieved a 48 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 1990 levels.