Editors Note: This is a guest contribution from the Lieutenant Governor of California, John Garamendi. See his last post on CleanTechnica.com.
California’s coastline has a hold on most of us, but if we don’t stop trashing our beaches and seas, it could begin to repel us.
These days, most of us accept the importance of environmental protection. We understand that recycling reduces our need to extract new resources, and we agree that businesses should not be allowed to put toxic sludge in our drinking water. And yet, in this age of convenience, it’s easy to think our individual actions don’t have an impact, and without clear public will, it’s easy for good bills to get lost in the shuffle of governance.
Recognizing this problem, with a diverse coalition of environmentalists, scientists, students, and community activists, I founded the Clean Seas Coalition last year to present a more unified voice in favor of legislation important to California’s coastlines.
At an event last month, I joined environmentalists and California Assembly members Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara), Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica), Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo), and Lori Saldana (D-San Diego) to promote a package of bills that will help provide a model the rest of the country can follow. If the bills pass the legislature and are signed into law, California will once again demonstrate trailblazing environmental leadership, phasing out the production of disposable plastic bags, polystyrene packaging, endocrine disruptor bisphenol-A, cigarette butts, and removable bottle caps, all of which blight our coastlines, pose a public health risk, and kill thousands of marine animals in California every year.
Another important bill sponsored by the Clean Seas Coalition would provide producers with an incentive to manufacture and package products that take into account the products’ lifetime contributions to landfills.
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