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You’re listening to KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America. Today we have a couple special guests on the show, Shelly Luce of Heal The Bay, President and CEO of Heal The Bay as well as Talia Walsh communication director for Heal The Bay as well.

Welcome Shelley and Talia.

Thank you.

Well, it’s great to have you on the show, Shelly. Why don’t you give us a little bit of background, as the President, CEO of Heal The Bay, how did you come to the organization, what’s kind of your life path that has taken you to the environmental movement?

Wow, I’ve been with Heal The Bay as CEO for a little over four years now. But fun fact, I actually started my career in environmental work with Heal The Bay back in 2000, when I was hired as a staff scientist, and I was doing my PhD at UCLA at the time working on the impacts that our urban environment has on natural streams, how it affects fish and the insects that live in the streams, the invertebrates. So that was really interesting work that hill, the bass supported.

And I started working with killaby at that time, which is where I really learned about water, in California, all kinds of things about water in California, from where we get it to where we send it when we’re done with it, and things that are happening along our coast and in our coastal ocean. And that’s really what made me the lifelong advocate that I am. And I left to the bay to run a couple of other local or environmental organizations. And then I came back four years ago as CEO.

And really, for me, it’s a dream job. Because here in Los Angeles, we have so much beautiful environment around us on the mountains with coastal streams and swimming holes and waterfalls, through our cities where we still have some really beautiful natural areas and parklands, and the potential for so much more. And of course, our our beaches and our wetlands and our coastal ocean and kelp forests, all of it damaged and impacted by people and development and climate change.

But all of it holding so much potential and so much importance for people in Southern California. So I think I gave you a little more than my life path there. But kind of my thinking and why I’m at she’ll debate today?

Well, it’s I’ve certainly looked at this and studied it a bit from a fairly non trained scientists view, it is extraordinarily complex, all the different elements that come together for our ecosystem, just here in Southern California, I noticed a recent article that they were tunneling a new waistline out to the to the ocean off of the coast of San Pedro.

And I would imagine that when it’s operational, it should help help the environment here in Southern California, you probably have a much better understanding of how that will operate in, in reality than I maybe you could help explain that one to, to our listeners.

Yes, certainly. I’m not actually thrilled about that project. And I’ll tell you why it is a project to build a new tunnel or a new pipeline, I should say. But in order to build it, they have to tunnel under Palace varities Peninsula so that the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County can discharge treated wastewater. So sewage from four or 5 million people and businesses, homes and businesses goes to a sewage treatment plant in Carson that the county of Los Angeles operates and they treat the sewage very well.

Full secondary treatment, we call it and then they send it in a pipe underground and a couple of miles off shore off of Palos Verdes Peninsula, and that tunnel that they send it through is very old and deteriorating. So it is important that something be done we need to do something to make sure we don’t have that tunnel, leak or even you know, have some sort of failure that would cause a su Which to come out in the wrong place too close to shore. So the county wants to rebuild it, which is extremely expensive.

They’re using this machine you may have heard of it digs the tunnel and lays the pipe at the same time. So it’s digging and laying pipe right behind it. It’s pretty cool. Engineers love it. I kinda love it. However, it’s extremely expensive. And at the same time, what we all want to do, including the county is to treat our sewage even better, clean it up even more, that we can recycle it and use it for drinking water. That’s called wastewater recycling.

The City of Los Angeles has already committed to doing that at Hyperion, the other major sewage treatment plant in Los Angeles County, that’s the one that’s right by the airport, beside Dockweiler. Beach. That plan is already planning, they’re in the planning process and starting the upgrades so that we can take wastewater, whatever goes down your drain and your home or business and clean it so well, that it can be used for drinking water.

Now they clean it, they inject it into groundwater, and then they pull it out somewhere else. So it actually filters through the ground as well before we drink it. It’s a really good system. It’s in use all over the world. It’s in use in Orange County, and has been for 30 years. So we’re very confident about that. And that’s why I would like the county to focus on that because that is like creating a new water supply.

Instead of bringing water from the San Francisco Bay Delta area, or from the Owens, Lake Owens River, and Mono Lake region, we can reuse the water that we have here now. So I think that’s a better path, it seems like the county is pursuing both at this point.

Oh, I was talking to a guest recently over talking about the trillions of dollars, trillions of gallons of water that we send off into the ocean, because we’re not able to kind of recapture it before it discharges. And I guess this would just be one additional way to kind of capture more water and use it.

And obviously in the middle of a severe drought, capturing all the water we can is is vital for our survival here is the city.

Yes, vital is the right word. It’s absolutely critical. So one way of doing it would be recycling our wastewater. And as I said, that’s underway, thank goodness. Another really important way is capturing rainwater. When it does rain, we let as you said trillions of gallons, many hundreds of billions of gallons flow off of our streets into our storm drains and rivers, you see the LA River and Biona Creek get really really full, they run really high during the rain.

That’s the millions of gallons we’re talking about that just go out to sea. And if we can slow down that water and capture it all over the county of LA, then we can let it sink into the ground, become part of our groundwater and be used later.

So you’re absolutely right, that is really important. And that’s why the county now has a program called Safe clean water program that comes from measure W and some of your listeners will remember Measure W because 75% of them voted for it back in 2018, I think it was actually 70% a huge percentage of people voted to tax themselves on their property taxes to pay for measure W or safety water program to put in place kinds of projects that will capture and infiltrate water.

And I don’t know if you’re familiar with what kinds of projects do that. But there are things like parks and gardens. So it’s really a beautiful multiple use of every tax dollar. When we do this, we we take concrete or asphalt and we convert it to a park or garden that people can enjoy. And we direct rainfall from the streets into that, then it can sink into the ground like it would have done naturally before we paved so much of our city. So we’re really just going back to a nature based solution to a water problem. So that’s a really, that’s a really great point.

I love that you tie those together. Because in developing our cities, we kind of have separated drinking water is separate from wastewater separate from the water that runs off of our streets when it rains. But actually, there’s only one water and it just goes around and around through the National Water Cycle. And so we are now in 2021 reconnecting those different parts of our water needs and our water uses and doing a much better job of taking care of them all.

Let me ask you in terms of getting back to nature, I mean, I’ve always felt coming from a middle Western background. It seems strange that our rivers are concretized here in Southern California, and the thought that it would a beautify our our communities to have a more natural river or like bow on a creek or the LA River.

But it would also i from what you’re saying, and I think, from what others are saying, would help recapture some of that water as well. Are there any plans for us to do that in the in the near future?

Yes, there are. First, I want to say that it’s not just a strange, it’s tragic, because rivers can’t function like rivers if the water is not in contact with the stream bed and the rocks and the plants that should exist there. And so we’ve taken away something really, really important.

And one way that it can be put back is we take out some concrete, it’s hard to do because of the flooding situation that might happen here in LA due to our rainfall patterns. But the very end of Biona creek where it flows through the Biona wetlands is a place where we can do it and that there’s a plan to make that happen. And I’m super excited about that.

Well, you know, we’re talking with Shelly Luce the president of Heal The Bay and, and her associate Talia Walsh communication director. We’ll be back in just one minute to talk with Shelley and tell us more about how, you know we can all do things to help our environment here in Los Angeles County. And we’ll be back in just one minute with Unite and Heal America. This is Matt Matern, KABC 790.

You’re listening to KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America. Again, our guest showing Lucintel you Welsh of Heal The Bay. Just pivoting back to you show about the problems that we’re having with plastic trash on our beaches and throughout the county. What what is he all the bay doing? And what can we all do to help work on that problem?

Well, plastic trash is a big problem. Everybody notices it, nobody likes it. And it’s very pervasive. So it’s a really tough one to deal with. He’ll the base has been working on it for the entire 35 years of our existence through beach cleanups. And we’ve picked up at least 2 million separate pieces of plastic trash from our beaches, I don’t know how many pounds off the top of my head are tons 1,000s and 1,000s of volunteers.

And when people see the trash that they’re picking up the plastic are picking up it’s really eye opening because you realize that yes, it’s it’s a big pieces of trash like big food takeout containers, or coffee cups and lids. And then you also see when you look in the sand all the tiny pieces. And that’s when I you started to get scared or angry, I think because you realize that this plastic breaks down into tiny pieces that are very, very hard to collect machine can’t collect them, a person can spend hours, it’s overwhelming.

And what we’re collecting is trash that has washed out from our storm drains into the coastal ocean and then been washed onto the beach through waves with waves, what we’re not picking up is all the trash that’s still in the ocean. So those little pieces, if we don’t change what we’re doing now than by the year 2050, those little pieces of plastic will outweigh marine life in the ocean, there’ll be more plastic by mass than fish. And that’s just unacceptable.

So we’re looking at the source of the problem, which is partly people’s behavior, but largely, the plastic itself. So we allow so much plastic packaging, and things like straws and coffee cup lids and plastic bags, that really an individual can’t really control that much plastic. And we also allow plastics that cannot be recycled, even if they have the what we call the chasing arrows symbol, the three the triangle of arrows, even products that have those aren’t being recycled.

And we’ve known that for a long time. So we have this kind of pretend thing where where we act like styrofoam and those drink boxes and those Capri Suns and the clam shells made of thin, clear plastic, we sort of pretend that those are recyclable, we put them in a recycling bin, but they don’t get recycled. They either get landfills or incinerated or dumped back into the environment.

And none of those are good solutions. None of those are okay. So we’re really supportive of a couple of pieces of legislation at the state level ones by Senator Ben Allen and this would require that the state of California reduce its disposable plastic trash output by 75% over 10 years, and that’s a big goal.

And we know it’s doable because we have the analyses that show that we can switch to either usable, in some cases, like using canvas bags at the grocery store, or compostable things that are made of what we call fiber, so they’re made of bamboo or by gas or other kinds of plant fibers.

Moving to those solutions, that I’m sure you’ve seen, Matt, the problem and the scale of the problem, if you’ve ever looked at the outlet of a creek or a storm drain or been on the beach after a storm, you’ve probably seen the amount of plastic just that washes up their website.

You see it all the time just walking down the beach, and it is overwhelming. And as you said, All of us are part of the problem. But I think as, as you also said, We need policy solutions, because no one of us can, can shift the tide on this. And, you know, I did have Senator Ben Allen on our program a few months ago and had a had a good discussion with him about some of that legislation that he’s working on. And I urge everybody to call their senators and assembly people to support that legislation, because it is doable, a, like you said, and it is what will turn the tide on this one.

So that we we do reduce it at the source because quite frankly, when we go into the grocery store, it’s very hard to walk out of there without some plastics in our cart. It just, it just is I don’t like to do it. But I noticed many times I with my best intentions of not buying the stuff with plastics that you know, some of my favorite products are in plastic, but it’s tough not to eat, you know, to do that to us. So, you know, from a policy standpoint, if we cut it off at the source, that’s the way to do it.

What other policy changes do you see that could be affected? Effective? I know the city of Manhattan Beach banned plastic trash bags a few years ago, and I think they seem to survive without them. It seems like it can be done. Though I did hear something about some new technology that that is able to Recycle more plastic waste. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, or seems as though we should be working on that. And as well.

Yeah, it would be great. I will say that in 20 years, I have periodically seen articles in scientific journals or elsewhere saying new way to recycle plastic, it’s usually related to a microbe that somebody has found, that can break down these very long chain molecules that we make under high heat and pressure from oil. That’s how plastics made. That’s why it doesn’t exist in the environment, because it can only be made under special circumstances that we create. And so once in a while we find a microbe or something that can break this down.

But usually turns out that it takes a really long time doesn’t break it down fully, we never get a full recycling. So when you recycle paper, you can fully recycle it because it’s mostly just trees. If we don’t put chemicals if we don’t add chemicals to the paper, when we make it, then it gets broken back down into natural constituents.

The Case for plastic because it’s coming from oil hydrocarbon. And we have to subject it to high heat and pressure to force these long chain molecules to form that give us the qualities we like about plastic. So we have to figure out other ways of getting the benefits of plastics without using this without using oil basically. And that’s why we have some types of materials like silicone, for example is much more natural and can be broken down over time.

And we also may keep using plastic or certain things. So you know, there are medical uses of plastic where things are sterile or things have to have a certain quality. Those don’t end up in the beaches and on our on our streets. That’s different what we’re talking about our coffee cup, and clamshell folders for your sandwich. I’ve ordered a croissant before I’m being handed a clamshell, a plastic clamshell with one croissant in it, just put it on a napkin. I don’t care a paper plate, it’s fine. So those kinds of uses, it seems like a one off, but it’s not. It’s in the trillions.

And it’s all over the world. The only thing so I want to just say that the recycling so far breaking down, so far has never panned out. And the oil industry and the plastic industry themselves know that that’s the case. So it’s kind of like the tobacco industry where they knew for a long, long time that smoke, smoking was causing cancer but they hid it. The oil industry is really good at that kind of thing. They hid their knowledge of climate change for a long time and they had ad campaigns and you Are campaigns deliberately to fool the public, they’ve done the same thing with plastic where they’ve told us, it’s really important. We can’t live without it. And it’s your fault if it ends up on the beach.

When all along, they’ve known that recycling doesn’t really work, it’s definitely not economical. It’s much cheaper to pull up new oil and make plastic than it is to take something made of plastic and go through this huge, long process to try to break it down and make it into something new. So the recycling is really not going to be a solution for us, as far as I can see at any time, replacement with different products that are better for the environment and healthier for people is gonna be a much better way to go.

And I also want to thank you, Matt, for suggesting that people call their state senator or state assembly member, because Senator Allen’s bills have failed in the in the state legislature last year, in part because there are four or five hold out state legislators who will not vote for them.

And I’m suspecting because they are listening to their supporters in the oil industry, who are telling them no, no, no, don’t make it harder for people to use more plastic, because that’s my business plan. And that’s where I want things to go. So we need to convince those legislators to vote against plastic against the oil industry, for people and for the environment.

Absolutely. Yeah, there’s tremendous business opportunity, of course, when we switch to a new industry, so if we switch away from these plastics, they’re going to be amazing opportunities for our California country companies to be the leaders in this revolution towards recyclable materials that we use for packaging, and we can do it obviously, it is doable.

We’ve sent people to the moon, we can package a croissant without putting it into plastic. So Amen. So and California, as long as they had a history of being leading on these issues, and the world, all of us need to head in the direction away from plastics. So there’s no doubt that is the move, as you said, by 2050 more plastic in the ocean than fish. That’s, that’s just a terrible situation.

And from what I understand that microplastics are getting into all the fish, so then we’re eating all this microplastics and we have all kinds of microplastics in us, which obviously can’t be healthy. So all of this is just a chain reaction down the stream. So why don’t we cut it off at the source and stop using plastics as much as we are? Well, you’re listening to Unite and Heal America. KABC 790 My guest Shelly Luce, Heal The Bay, President CEO and Talia Walsh Communications Director. We’ll be back in just one minute to talk with both of them more about many of the environmental issues facing California today.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America on KABC 790. This your host Matt Matern, our guest Talia Walsh, Communication Director of Heal The Bay, Talia. Welcome and great to have you on the show. As far as I wanted to ask you a question about the beach report card that your organization is doing and what, what it is and tell us a little bit about its history.

Sure. So for more than three decades, Heal The Bay, has produced the beach report card and it’s essentially an analysis of over 500 beaches in California and bacterial pollution of those beaches. So we grade beaches on an eight F scale. Hopefully, you know a and B’s are passing so beaches, that’s what they’re aiming for those passing grades and then C through after failing grades. And, you know, we evaluate during dry weather.

So you know, typically so summer months, those are the peak season when we see millions of folks that are shoreline. But we also evaluate during wet weather, surfers and paddleboarders. And other folks tend to use the ocean year round. So we like to look in the winter as well during those wet weather months. And what we find is pretty alarming.

So the good news is it during the summer, you know we see about 90% It’s a little over 90% of our beaches are getting ANB grades, which is awesome. It’s great news, but the flip side is that during wet weather events, that goes down to only 57% of beaches that are getting A and B grades which means the increased the public health risks are drastically increasing following rain events and Shelley kind of indicated this earlier but the reason for that is because all when it rains in LA all of that runoff and pollution from our streets or our neighborhoods or homes, goes into the storm drains through our rivers and out into the ocean.

And so there’s a higher concentration, you know, about three to five days after a major rain event in LA, or anywhere in California, really where the water is impacted. And so therefore, you should probably stay on the water for three to five days after it rains.

But yeah, the beach report card has not only informed the public about, you know, health risks, or potential health risks at their favorite ocean spots, but it also has improved policy. So when we started the beach report card, there was actually no statewide mandate in California for ocean water quality monitoring, meaning we weren’t, you know, 30 years ago, I mean, kind of makes sense, right?

But 30 years ago, we weren’t tracking the data. We weren’t looking at, you know, where’s this bacterial pollution going? How is it impacting our ocean and our people. And so actually, AB 411, was passed in the 90s.

And that allowed that essentially gave us a mandate in California, a statewide mandate, which required monitoring during recreation seasons. And that’s how we have all of the data now that we analyze. And so we’ve seen some other policies come out as a result of the beach report card that really helped improve water quality. So it’s a it’s a neat program.

What so what can we do to improve the water quality so that the grades go up from 57% only getting A’s and B’s during wet weather to a higher percentage? What what changes would we need to make to improve the water quality?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s really depends on specific areas. And I think that’s what the nice part about having a wealth of data, you know, from 500 different beaches, is we can see the beaches that are thriving, and understand why. And then we can see the beaches that are really suffering, and under and evaluate why. And so that’s the first step right is awareness. And so once we’re aware that, okay, this, this beach, so for example, mother’s Beach, in Marina Del Rey, in greater LA than the area, it’s a, it’s a very popular beach for families with young children, because it’s, there’s really no wave action, there’s no current.

But what that also means is there’s no circulation. And so in that specific spot, we see it as a chronic, having chronic poor water quality. We were aware of that now. And then we inform the public, those are like the first two steps this, the third step is, why is the water quality bad and really getting, you know, local governments, local communities and scientists to evaluate. And so that’s what really the next phase of it is, is looking at the sort of sore spots along our coasts, and really understanding what’s at what’s at play.

So San Clemente actually is a is an example of, you know, they were chronically having some issues down by their peer. And they really made a concerted effort, government and community and nonprofits together to improve the water quality, they launched a program where we launched a few different programs, one to improve the circulation of the water, one to help with some animal bacteria that was getting in there because of just, you know, large, large populations of certain animals are kind of hanging out on the pier.

So, you know, there, there’s really specific solutions to each area, but the first step is even being aware because we don’t see that the problem exists, that it’s not a visible, like, like plastic pollution and bacterial pollution is really invisible.

And so, you know, folks would, you know, potentially get sick get an ear infection, a stomachache, you know, even worse, and they might equate it to something they ate, not necessarily the ocean. So it’s a kind of mysterious thing that’s lurking and but the first step really in improving it is being aware that the problem exists.

Sure, absolutely. I know in terms of then you also do a river report card. How long has the organization been doing that? And what kind of grades are our rivers getting?

Yes, so we, Heal The Bay produces the RiverPark card. We’ve been doing the report for three years and monitoring for a little bit longer. We specifically focus on the greater LA area. We look at the San Gabriel River watershed, the Malibu Creek watershed in the Los Angeles River watershed, and we focus on about 28 popular recreational areas within those watersheds.

And we evaluate we go out and sample we pull data from other sources and we evaluate how our rivers are doing because they are places of recreation folks boat in them. Sometimes folks wade in the water. They are areas where people are coming into contact in the water and as Shelley mentioned before, there’s a huge potential for this to be a place for even more recreation in the future.

Well, in terms of recapturing that water and and somehow using it for, for all of us, what are the things that that you see being done with our rivers that are improving, you know, that recapture process?

Sure. So, it, I would say multi benefit projects are really pillars in improving water quality for sort of our inland waterways, our rivers. So, you know, parks that serve as rain gardens, that’s that filter the water that’s coming in, naturally, I mean that it also captures some of the water. So those are really kind of, you know, important. And what’s nice about them is they’re scalable, you could have, you know, one on every street.

And so it’s a scalable solution, if we look at it long term is really building more of these multi benefit. Use cases. So sometimes they’re all green, you know, it’s a green park. But sometimes there’s some gray infrastructure, you know, piping on what’s happening underneath, that’s helping filter the water that’s helping capture the water, reuse it.

So I think looking at sort of the, you know, not mega mega projects, but more of these smaller, scalable projects that we can kind of fine tune depending on the community needs. That’s where we’re going to see improvements to our water quality, and also public health, really,

I guess I have this vision of Downtown LA with the LA river running through it and having it be green and said to is that a pipe dream? Or is there any, any hope that we’re ever going to have a river bank, with, with trees and grass and things like that on it downtown, we can manifest it, it’s up to us to manifest. So right now, there’s actually a master plan for the LA River that the LA County is as put out, and there’s a lot of debate and feedback and conversation happening around what should the future of our LA River look like.

And I share the vision with you of it being a naturalized River, while also supporting our communities while also protecting us from flooding. I mean, these are things that we can do, we just have to manifest them now. And start building toward it’s not going to happen overnight. But it’s something that we can start chipping away at. And it really takes a grand vision.

And I think, you know, that’s where the the synergy between government and community comes up play. You know, and really together we could we could create something like that. I don’t think it’s a pipe dream at all.

Literally lol glad that others share that vision. And that, yes, we should be working towards that because it would be an incredible benefit for the city as well as environmentally good for all of us to save some of that water that’s currently just rifling down a concrete river that shoots out to the ocean with without us recharging the soil with that water.

So we’re going to talk to you a little bit about the aquarium reopening. And tell us a little bit about that. And right as we go into the break, and then maybe after the break, we can talk a little bit more about it.

Sure. So as many businesses have experienced over the past year, we were closed. We were close for over a year. Our Hill, the Bay Aquarium at the Santa Monica Pier, we’re really excited. We just recently reopened and we’re actually now fully reopened our interior and exterior and we’re starting public programming.

So we’re very excited. And I think next week we’re starting camps and field trips. So students are coming back, which is thrilling. We’ve missed them.

Well, you’re listening to KABC 790, your host Matt Matern for Unite and Heal America. Guest, Talia Walsh Communication Director of Heal The Bay. And we’ll be back in just one minute to talk to tell you a little bit more about the aquarium at Santa Monica Pier, which is so a lot of you would like to go visit in the in the coming months. So we’ll be back in just one minute.

You’re listening KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America. My guest today is Talia Walsh Communication Director of healed Bay. And Talia we were just talking about before the break the aquarium reopening at Santa Monica Pier and how exciting that is for your organization for all of us who like to visit here and tell us a little bit about more about the aquarium.

Sure. So on a typical year, we welcome about 100,000 people to our aquarium and 20,000 of those are students from the greater LA area. So it’s a really like amazing hub for science, education, advocacy and community action.

And really, the education piece is integral to our area because we provide field trips to the ocean. And for many students, it’s actually the first time they’re coming to the ocean and seeing it. And for most, all of them’s seeing it through a science lens.

So it’s really sort of an important community function like, you know, in addition to being a really cool destination. So we have about 100 local species on exhibit. They’re all species that you can find off our coastline in, in California and Southern California, specifically, we’ve sharks, we have a shark nursery, and we actually have the full lifecycle sharks, baby sharks and adult sharks, Shark eggs, we have jellies and starfish, different types of creatures.

And it’s it’s a really like an intimate, but very immersive space. And we are really excited because we just reopened our doors again. And so we’re starting to have folks come in and, and re engage with our issues. Yeah, so it’s good times.

I’m excited to go I didn’t even know the aquarium existed on the pier, and I live but within a few miles walk of, of the pier. So you know, now I am looking forward to go check it out. But that sounds great. I also want to talk to you about the the Coastal Cleanup that your organization is heading up and tell us a little bit more about that, and, and why that’s so important for us.

Sure. So Shelley mentioned earlier, you know, we have a, like major plastic pollution problem. And you know, that, like 80% of the trash that we pick up on our beaches is plastic. And so cleanups are sort of our last defense before that plastic reaches the ocean. And then we really like can never get it back. And it creates harm, right forever, because it doesn’t go away.

So cleanups are the last defense. We we have been doing that we do that we’ve been doing them for 30 plus years, we do on average about two cleanups a day as an organization. And Coastal Cleanup Day is sort of the culmination. It’s a Cal it’s actually an international event. So it’s, you know, celebrated by like, over a million people on the third Saturday of the month, every September. In LA, we have I think our record is around 14,000 people that participate in that day of action.

And so folks can head out to their local shoreline or even do it in their neighborhood in a park nearby. They don’t necessarily need to travel far. It’s a few hours on a Saturday, this year, it’s happening September 18. I think it’s like 9am to noon or something in and yeah, you can find you can find a spot to do it. And yeah, you can clean up the beach. And then the cool part is is you track all your trash. Why is that cool? Because all that data goes into a very large database that we use to improve policy and build awareness really in the business and public communities.

So for example, we have about four point, I think it’s like 4.5 million pieces of data. That equates to 4.5 million of pieces of trash that we’ve our volunteers have picked up over the last three decades, it’s too much trash, but we can look and we can analyze, that’s how I can come up with things and say, that’s how I came up with that stat earlier, like 70 to 80% of our trash. So we pick up his plastic, we can take that and we can use that information to help build policies.

That’s how we’ve enacted really policies along our coastline is because we can point to the data and say there’s the problem. We’re seeing it, you know, this is how much our volunteers are collecting, but there’s so much more. So Coastal Cleanup Day is a great awareness mechanism. And it also means that there’s international data about this issue and we track at an international scale, not only the types of items that we find, but the brands as well.

And so then we can go back to the big brands, whomever they are and say hey, like we’re finding a lot of this on our shorelines like what are you gonna do about it? It’s your product so I think it’s it’s a really inspiring day of action you can take part really anywhere it whether you’re in California or not you can take part in it it happens across the United States and like I said around the world, and it’s it’s an exciting event.

We open registration in the summer, I want to say like August ish will open registration so you can actually sign up for a specific spot. And you can be like safely in a group, you know, social distancing and what have you. But yeah, you can actually do it If members of the community to so if you want it to, you could do that, or you can do it as an individual household?

Well, let me let me ask you in terms of organizations that you’ve found lots of their products on the beaches? How, what are some of the success stories in terms of them listening to your concerns or concerns and changing policy?

And then I’ll also ask you about the data collection? And how are you using collecting that data? Yeah, you pick a piece of trash up, it doesn’t necessarily have data markings on it, what do you what are you doing to? To catalogue that? And how has it been useful to you?

Yes. Okay. So I’ll start with the second part first. So how we track the data, we essentially categorize it. So you know, you’re walking down the beach, and you see sort of something in the sand, you pick it up, you’re not really sure what it is, but you know, it’s plastic. So we have a section, that’s plastic pieces, we also have one, like cigarette butts, bottle caps, snack wrappers, or food wrappers.

So we’ve created sort of these, you know, 20 or so categories. And for the most part, like nine times out of 10 items fit within those categories, you know, for medical, you know, medical is another category, like needles, or sanitary products. So, we, you know, we kind of bubble them into categories, then there’s also studies that are done, where we do track brands, and, you know, sometimes you pick something up and you you don’t know, it’s it’s a yogurt container, but it’s all, you know, smudged, you don’t know, if you’ll play or not.

So, you know, we that would count as nothing in a brand study, but there are, you know, there are things that we can find and can see. And the point is to build the data over time, because you go out one clean up, and that might not be representative of, of, you know, the entire coastline of problem, you know, the issue across the coastline. So, the bigger the dataset, the more you know, like truth and proof, really, there is into claims that we can make about this being an issue.

So, in terms of like how we’ve used, you know, 4.5 million pieces of trash slash data, to influence companies, I’ll tell you, it’s an uphill battle. It, there’s no real direct line, you know, that there’s dotted lines. So I can say that there’s, you know, the bigger, you know, bottle manufacturers, they definitely have taken notice. And they’ve made commitments around recycling and around reuse of recycled plastics. That’s good. But we want to action.

So we have seen that, that some folks have made commitments, which is great, you know, the bigger, the Nestle’s the Coca Cola is, you know, the really, really big mega companies in the world that can actually move the needle when they change when they make a change to their supply chain, that changes, really what’s on our shelves. And that’s exciting.

So, yeah, we were happy to see the small steps and commitments that have been made. We will say we I’ve worked more directly with, like, fashion, you know, sort of the fashion industry. So we’ve worked with key Swiss, and we helped consult them directly, you know, by around the types of materials they used in shoes.

So we’ve essentially, like helped them shift from using like Virgin leather, as well as even virgin plastics in some of their shoes, to now going and using reusable, recyclable and sorry, not reusable, recyclable items, recyclable plastics, recyclable, rubber, send leathers and stuff like that. It’s not perfect, right? It’s a small step.

But like, those are the types of like if we can gradually get all businesses to make these small steps. That’s a culture shift. And that empowers us all to really, like make the next step and the next step and the next step.

So again, there’s not I can’t point to a single, like success story like, Oh, yes, we showed them the data, and they change the product. But the conversations happening, and I do see commitments being made. And that’s great.

Like, it’s the time to be bold. And you look at what happened recently with the Exxon board and the Royal Dutch Shell board, where activists demanded that they put board members on there that were more committed to helping address climate change.

And I think that we should be putting the same pressures on the Nestle’s and Coca Cola has to design products that don’t have all this plastic and they can do it as we talked about. It’s it is doable, and I think we as consumers and shareholders and concerned citizens can say, we’ve had enough. This is time for real change and you’ve you’ve polluted our environment long enough. We bought the product.

Yeah. Part of the problem too, it’s not like it’s all them, but it, they can, they can change at the source. And we will pay the cost of different packaging. And quite frankly, we could probably get packaging that would be roughly the same cost as this plastic containers that they’re currently using. So, and I assume that your organization has thought that as well that there are packaging options out there that are just as cheap as the other. Yes.

Plastic mock?

Yes, there’s, there’s misconceptions around cost. Like, obviously, like changing your whole supply chain, that’s expensive. Let’s just acknowledge that. I totally get it. For small businesses, though, like thinking small businesses making the shift to it. There’s misconceptions around costs. I think, one one point of clarification there is we did a study in Santa Monica with about a half a dozen small business, small restaurants, you know, that were run by small business owners or not big chains, you know, just, you know, individual, you know, restaurants in Santa Monica.

And we helped them one summer over the course of I think it was three months make the shift from single use plastic straws, utensils, the packaging, to reusable to more sustainable options. And what they found was was there wasn’t the cost wasn’t the issue. It was the training of staff. It was that was the piece that was the barrier. And we were there to help and hold hands and it worked out. But that was actually the biggest barrier was that again, culture shift of like that mindset of like, oh, wait, I don’t just leave the five straws on their table.

Okay. Like, okay, you know, that was the kind of that was where it got sticky. It wasn’t the it wasn’t the cost. They all the businesses did the evaluation and the cost ended up being about the same. So it was it’s kind of interesting, right?

Right. So we can make these shifts and on all of us can be part of this change. And I appreciate all the great work that Heal The Bay is doing and Talia Walsh thanks for being on the program, but you’re listening Unite and Heal America. This is Matt Matern and join us next week on KABC 790. We’re talking about a lot of issues facing Southern California in particular the environment. Have a great week, everybody.

As you may know your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 ML G for you. That’s 844 ML G for you or 84465449688446544968.