"What's styrofoam, Grandpa?"
Some day I’ll be an old guy, like my father and his father.
And my granddaughters will ask me questions like “what’s styrofoam?”
and “what’s a gas station?”
When that happens, I’ll tell them a story about Thursday night in
Capitola, an idyllic central California beach town.
I’ll tell them about how plastic and stryofoam used to be everywhere
on the land and in the ocean. I’ll tell them about how it used to
strangle and choke animals like albatross and sea turtles.
Then I’ll tell them how people got organized, pulled together the
best research and made smart changes to clean up our planet. I’ll
tell them how scientists and engineers figured out how to make the
same containers out of materials that turn into soil when we are done
using them.
When I was a kid I would take bites out of my stryrofoam cups and
chew the stuff a bit. I probably even ate some of it. Then I’d take
another bite. The texture was interesting. But I had the odd
feeling that no matter how long I chewed it, it was still styrofoam.
It didn’t dissolve and break apart in my mouth like food, leaves or
paper. Then I’d spit the bright white foam blob into my hand and
throw it away. It’s still out there, somewhere.
Thursday night at the Capitola City Council meeting I joined dozens
of local citizens who spoke passionately and intelligently about
banning styrofoam and plastic products from their city’s food service
industry.
And I listened to the responses of the council: some measured and
others rambling, but all deeply thoughtful in their own way.
It was heartening to hear true wisdom from elected officials and it
was heartbreaking to hear some elected officials play into the
plastic industry’s illogic, again.
But the heroes last night were the kids. They were brave, funny and
articulate.
When I was their age I wasn’t speaking to the city council, I was
chewing on styrofoam!
A young woman from Capitola stood in front of her city council and
said: “Styrofoam and plastic are bad for us, they’re bad for the
ocean, they kill animals, and they shouldn’t be in our food, what’s
so hard about banning them from our town? Just ban them. It’s a no-
brainer.”
She was right. It’s not hard to connect the dots. But the plastic
and restaurant industries are big and powerful. They know that first
it will be Capitola, then a few more towns. Then it will go beyond
food service to packaging materials. Pretty soon we’ll have bans on
all non-essential petroleum products.
The industry lobbyists tried to stop the ban on styrofoam and
plastic. But on Thursday night, they failed. The ban was upheld and
Capitola is becoming a cleaner and greener community.
Some day, we’ll live in petroleum-free communities. These first
steps--these small revolutions--are building towards that vision.
Wallace J. Nichols, PhD is Senior Scientist at Ocean Conservancy and
a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences. He can
be contacted at www.wallacejnichols.org
