Keep Plastic Out of the Pacific

Trash is killing ocean wildlife

The average Californian uses 500 plastic bags each year—for a total of 10 billion annually— and fewer than 5 percent are recycled. Too many of them end up as litter and make their way to the ocean. Today, there are 100 million tons of trash in the North Pacific Gyre; in some parts of the ocean, plastic outweighs plankton 6 to 1.

All of this trash in the Pacific is creating an ecological disaster:

• Turtles and seabirds frequently ingest floating plastic, mistaking it for food. They also get entangled in bags and often drown or die of suffocation.
• Adult seabirds inadvertently feed small bits of plastic to their chicks — often causing them to starve to death after their stomachs become filled with plastic.
• Toxic pollutants leach from the plastic into the water. Scientists are now studying whether fish and other marine animals absorb these toxic pollutants. If so, there is a good chance that we also absorb them when we eat fish.

What’s really scary is that scientists tell us this plastic may never biodegrade. And every day we go without tackling this problem, it becomes a little bit worse. Plastic in the Pacific has tripled since the 1980s and is expected to double by 2020 — unless we take action.

We can stop the waste

Nothing we use for a few minutes should pollute our oceans for hundreds of years. Californians know this, and are taking action to protect the Pacific.

We’ve made great progress winning local bans and educating the public on the harmful effects of plastic. In 2007, California used more than 18 billion bags. Two years later, Californians had reduced bag use by 33 percent. In the last year alone, we’ve helped more than a dozen communities ban plastic bags—but we’re not stopping until California is bag-free.

Let's ban the bags statewide!

With more cities banning bags each month, we have the momentum. With your help, we can win an historic victory for our ocean—a statewide ban on plastic bags.

Member support makes it possible for our staff to do research, make our case to the media, reach out to critical constituencies, and help government officials make the right choices for our ocean. Join our campaign by urging Gov. Jerry Brown to ban plastic bags statewide.