Team Marine

High school students are concerned about the effects of plastic bags on the life in the ocean and on CO2 emissions. They dress up as plastic bag monsters and act to successfully ban plastic bags in their city of Santa Monica.

To read about Team Marine’s current projects and be inspired, go to their web site: www.teammarine.org

ACTION ITEMS

How to Ban Plastic Bags in Your Community

High-school students successfully campaigned to ban plastic bags in their city of Santa Monica. This was one of the first cities that banned plastic bags in the United States. The entire country of China has banned plastic bags, thereby saving China hundreds of thousands of gallons of fossil fuel and preventing thousands of tons of global warming gas from entering the atmosphere.

Here’s How You Can Ban Plastic Bags in Your Community:

Show the Team Marine video to your teacher or school principal.
Start a Team Marine at your school and find a mentor.
Create a website for the new group you want to create and create a facebook page for it. Put the Young Voices movie trailer on your website. Send out the URL for your website to the kids in your school and community.
Ask your principal or teacher if you can put on an assembly. Do a school assembly explaining how plastic bags use fossil fuel and how much CO2 can be prevented from going into the atmosphere through a plastic bag ban.
After the assembly ask any students who are interested in helping to get a ban on plastic bags to stay and dress up as a plastic bag monster.
With a scientist or teacher, do a study like Yassi and Evelina did on the impact of plastic bags on ecosystems. Bring the study to the local media—TV, newspapers and do a BLOG. Count and document (photography with a digital camera) the number of bags on the trees along your local river. Find out how many bags are thrown away each day. Call your local waste management company. Find out the cost how much # could you save by reducing garbage.
Visit local politicians and get them to introduce a resolution to ban plastic bags in your community, town, city or state.
Bring data and testisfy at town hall meetings as a plastic bag monster and bottlecap monster.
Publicize and hold rallies with posters and make sure there’s a plastic bag monster and a bottlecap monster –media: contact local media.
Once you win a ban on plastic bags, follow through and make sure it’s implemented making frequent visits and calls to your local politicians and PUBLICIZE YOUR SUCCESS AND WHY THE BAN IS IMPORTANT to you as a young person inheriting this Earth.

What to bring to your assembly:

1. The Team Marine video
2. Clipboards so students who want to create a Team Marine at their school can sign up
3. Info sheets with the website URL

What information is helpful to share about plastic bags:

1. Affect global warming because they are made of fossil fuel
2. End up in the oceans where they are eaten by birds, mammals and it kills millions of them / year
3. Litter waterways and roadways
4. Are not biodegradable—they stay around forever.