President's Message - Just One Word... Plasticsby Krag Unsoeld With this quote, Mr. McGuire defined an era while talking to Benjamin in the classic film "The Graduate." He was alluding to this substance as providing a future of jobs and industry for Benjamin. Now we have found that plastic is not only pervasive, it's threatening. A gyre is the swirling center of a roughly circling pattern of currents. In 1997, while sailing his boat home after a transpacific sailboat race, Captain Charles Moore came across what has been described as a floating island of plastic debris. In reality it is not an island but simply a high concentration of plastic - some large items and lots of smaller bits and pieces. There are five gyres that are known to be creating these plastic masses found in the northern and southern Pacific and Atlantic and the Indian oceans. This plastic provides chemical pollution from phthalates and Bisphenol-A (BPA) to the ocean water and is ingested by marine life. Think Global, Act Local What can we do about an issue that is both so large and far removed from our everyday life? According to the Project Censored website, 35 nations have already banned the use of single use plastic shopping bags and nine countries are charging levies or fees for their use. Twelve other countries are considering taking similar action. Thurston County, Olympia and Tumwater are thus in good company when they enacted their recent ordinances to restrict single-use plastic bags. These are the first steps in a long journey to decrease the estimated 500 billion to one trillion of these bags used every year throughout the world. These new regulations will take effect July 1, 2014. Meanwhile, do what you can to decrease plastics in your world. Use bottles and jars for bulk items when you go shopping. Use a cloth bag to carry things home in. Avoid buying merchandise already wrapped in plastic or encased in plastic blister packs or clamshells. Let the store owners know that you disapprove of these. Join SPEECH! Did you make any New Year's resolutions for 2014? Did you commit yourself to becoming more of a committed and active participant in your community? Did you decide that you wanted to try to help make the world a better place, starting in the South Sound region? The South Puget Environmental Education Clearinghouse (SPEECH) welcomes you to contact us now to offer your creative energies and skills as a new member of our SPEECH board of directors. Help us organize community forums and presentations on timely topics, help research, write, publish or distribute the South Sound Green Pages, or work behind the scenes on our organizational infrastructure. Memberships help us sustain our organization. We publish the names of our supporters once a year, and will do so (unless you request otherwise) in the next issue. Join now online at www.oly-wa.us/greenpages or use the slip featured on page 15. March 24 - SPEECH's 24th Annual Meeting Our SPEECH annual meeting is Monday, March 24, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. at the LOTT Clean Water Alliance, 500 Adams Street NE, in downtown Olympia, and open to the public. The annual meeting is where SPEECH briefly describes its purpose and formally elects and introduces new volunteer board members. Our keynote speaker will be Nadine Romero, Thurston County's hydrogeologist. Romero is a dynamic speaker who spends much of her time quantifying the hydrologic cycle of Thurston County and building numerical models for prediction in contaminant chemistry, land use and climate. You will not want to miss her presentation, which will feature her very latest research around local groundwater, streamflow distribution, and sea level rise issues. LOTT Clean Water Alliance staff will also be available to briefly update the community about its multi-year Reclaimed Water Infiltration Study. We hope to see you there! Krag Unsoeld is President of SPEECH and can be reached at kragu@juno.com or (360) 250-9982.
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