Plastic Free July Webinar Transcription
Sarah Palladino: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Community Environmental Council webinar. We're just going to get started here shortly, but please add your name to the chat and where you're coming from today.
Yaya Laureano: [Spanish language]
Sarah: Tishesh from Santa Barbara. We've got Jamie from Los Arroyos. Santa Barbara, a lot of Santa Barbara folks local. Robin, Alex. Thanks for joining us, everyone. All right. We're going to get started here. My name is Sarah Palladino and I'm the senior manager of People, Planet and Community at Toad&Co. We're a local Santa Barbara-based sustainable clothing company and we're been longtime partners and supporters of the Community Environmental Council's work.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Sarah: Today's webinar topic is Plastic Free July, engaging with the circular economy. This webinar is part of the Community Environmental Council's Climate Action webinar series.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Sarah: As we get started, just a little housekeeping. First, this webinar is being presented in English as well as with Spanish interpretation.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Sarah: I'm happy to introduce Yaya Laureano and Nayra Guzman from Rooted Language Justice, who will review how to access the Spanish interpretation for this webinar.
Yaya: [Spanish language] Hello, everyone. My name is Yaya Laureano, and I will be [inaudible 00:02:59] in English and Spanish.
Nayra Guzman: [Spanish language] I am here with my colleague Yaya, and we will be providing interpretation in English and Spanish as was mentioned. Language Justice is an important sector for CEC and so [inaudible 00:03:21] and we will be able to access this in both languages.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Nayra: The interpretation feature is now activated. If you are on a computer, [unintelligible 00:03:50]. If you are on a mobile device, you will see three dots on the bottom [inaudible 00:03:58] You'll be able to click on and select the language you prefer. You are not in bilingual [inaudible 00:04:05] you select on this channel.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Nayra: I just want to make sure that that last bit was heard. I just don't have to repeat myself.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Nayra: We remind you, on screen are the instructions on how to connect to interpretation via a smartphone or mobile device. You can also find those instructions on the screen.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Nayra: As a reminder, we ask speakers to please speak at a moderate pace and spell, or explain acronyms when they are first mentioned.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Nayra: Finally, we expect folks joining this webinar to be active in the chat and with the Q&A feature. We ask for your support in making sure your comments and questions can be understood in both languages. You can do so by translating for yourself using the DeepL tool we are now dropping in the chat. Every time you're about to write something in the chat or Q&A, please translate it in your message in the chat in both languages. You can see this on the screen and then you can see it in the chat. Machine translation is not 100% accurate, but it will help us communicate our [inaudible 00:06:19] We appreciate everyone's participation and ask.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Nayra: Thank you. [inaudible 00:07:15] We may begin to use the interpretation feature. We will be copying this in the chat. I know my audio was a little bit off, and so we'll begin shortly.
Yaya: [Spanish language]
Sarah: Thank you, Nayra. This presentation is going to be recorded and you will receive a link to the recording and other resources in an email after the event. During the presentation, we would like to invite you to add in questions to the Q&A section and we're going to try to answer those live during the webinar as well as at the end during the Q&A session. Please just take a moment right now and look for that Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom screens so that you know where to put those questions in to be answered.
This virtual meeting is taking place in what is known as California, home to nearly 200 tribal nations. We acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of our many regions, but the CEC is coming to you from Chumash lands. We would love to hear what land you are coming from. In the chat, please add your acknowledgment to the land that you're coming from today, if you'd like.
All right, thank you. For those of you who are new to the Community Environmental Council or maybe you haven't heard what they've been up to recently, I'm going to share a video that actor Jeff Bridges recently did on behalf of the CEC.
[music]
Jeff Bridges: Single-use plastics are wreaking havoc on the environment and threatening our health and future. These items often escape collection and end up in the ocean, where they break down into microplastics that negatively impact people and wildlife. Plastics are made from fossil fuels and are a significant contributor to climate chaos. The Community Environmental Council has a plan. We're preventing the use of plastic water bottles on the Central Coast by equipping schools and public spaces' water stations with over 6 million single-use bottles already prevented to date.
With a variety of local partners, we have successfully advocated for regional regulations that eliminate single-use plastics at the source. We can reduce the damage caused by single-use plastics by continually to build these types of smart policies and community action. To change everything, we need everyone. Are you in? Join us at cecsb.org to end climate chaos now.
Sarah: Amazing. Thank you. The CEC's plastic work on behalf of the community is really made possible by people like you and everyone on the webinar today. We'd love to hear a little bit more about what you are doing and how are you taking part in climate action. There's going to be a quick poll that's going to pop up on the screen. The responses will remain anonymous.
Some of those questions there are, "How familiar are you with the ways to responsibly dispose of plastic waste? Do you participate in climate change advocacy, like writing emails to representatives, maybe testifying, going to a march or a protest? Do you own or lease an electric vehicle? Do you take the climate into account when buying food at the store or dining out?"
Then also love to know which future webinars would be the most interesting for you to attend. Then how strongly do you agree or disagree with the statement plastic waste is a significant contributor to climate change? We're going to give everyone a few seconds to put in their answers and review the results. I hope we have a surrounding answer to the last one, is plastic waste a significant contributor to climate change?
Hopefully, everyone is on the same page with that one, but we will see. All right, here we go. Here are the results. First question looks like everyone is pretty familiar with how to dispose of plastic waste appropriately. Looks like the answer to the second question with if you are participating in different advocacy avenues. Looks like a lot of people are pretty much pretty sometimes.
Then it looks like, do you own or lease an electric vehicle? 50% saying no, but a few people are owning and leasing electric vehicles. That's definitely my next step, so I'm excited about that. Then do you take climate change into account when you're buying groceries or dining out? Most people are. That's awesome. Then future webinars? Oh yes, climate policy and advocacy.
Everyone's really interested in building environmental justice. Awesome. Really excited about those. Then how strongly do you agree or disagree with the statement plastic waste is a significant contributor to climate change? It looks like 81% of people strongly agree. I think we're going to hear a lot about that today during the webinar. Thank you so much for those answers.
Next, I'm going to introduce Kathi King. Kathi is the CEC's Director of Climate Education and Leadership and has been with the CEC since 2008. She brought with her a passion to reduce our dependency on single-use plastics and provide solutions to the plastic crisis. She helped build a coalition that advocates for strong policies to regulate the use and distribution of single-use plastics in our region and beyond, and she has directed CEC's Rethink the Drink Program since 2010, providing more than 100 water refill stations to local schools and public spaces.
Amazing. She also brings this passion for reducing plastic into other leadership roles, including as the festival director of CEC's, Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival and lead teacher of CEC's UC, climate stewards course. Today, Kathi is going to be moderating our discussion about moving to a circular or reuse model that designs waste out of our systems. Take it away, Kathi.
Kathi King: Thank you, Sarah. It's great to be here with you and over 100 who are joining us today. Thanks to everyone for being here. Before we let you go, Sarah, I would like to ask you a couple of questions about your work at Toad&Co because it aligns so closely with what we were discussing today in the webinar. Can you talk a little bit about the types of fabrics that you use at Toad&Co?
Sarah: Yes, definitely. We're a sustainable clothing company, so we're trying to make the best decisions possible for the environment. When we're using virgin materials in our clothing, we're only really using natural and sustainable fibers like hemp or organic cotton, tensile, lenzing modal. Really the gold standard for us is using recycled materials because that's what is going to keep textiles out of landfills, and it also reduces the energy and the water consumption that it takes from processing a raw material into a new fabric. Our goal right now is actually to have even more of our line made out of recycled materials and a mix of natural and sustainable fibers as well.
Kathi: Wow, that's fantastic. Thanks for that work. I'd also like to ask you about your reusable shipper program because that really aligns very closely with what we are talking about today. Do you want to tell us about that?
Sarah: Yes. Something we're really proud of as an organization, but packaging is obviously a huge hurdle in the environmental crisis, and it's a huge hurdle we face in our society. We ended up partnering with an organization called LimeLoop and they offer reusable shippers that we can use instead of using a one-time shipper for our packages that are going to customers around the country.
This reusable shipper, it's made out of old vinyl billboards, so very, very durable, doesn't break down really easily, and able to ship thousands of times across the country, so then when you go to checkout, you have the option of a reusable shipper and that'll come to your door with your garments in it and then have a return label that gets shipped back to our warehouse so that that reusable shipper can be used over and over and over again, which is an awesome circular solution to the packaging issues we have in our country.
Kathi: Definitely. In terms of what goes into those reusable shippers, I think you found a solution for reducing plastic or even eliminating plastic there as well. Is that correct?
Sarah: Yes. You've probably noticed when you get clothing delivered to your door, it's in a plastic poly bag. It's a one-time poly bag and it's awful for the environment. Most places do not recycle it in your normal recycling.
CEC does for film plastics, but we actually are really proud that this next season we have transitioned all of our poly bags to paper mailers. They're called Vala bags. They're basically paper that is 100% recyclable, still keeps your clothes fresh and nice as they're being shipped, but can be recycled in your normal blue bin which is a really great initiative that we've been working on for a long time, trying to get 100% of our line there and we are there now. So awesome, awesome work that the team's been doing on that.
Kathi: Congratulations and thanks for sharing that with us. I also want to let everyone know that if that has sparked questions for you, for Sarah, that we are not letting her go just yet. You won't see her on camera maybe, but she will still be here, and if there's questions that come up in the Q&A box, she might answer those in writing or we might call her back if you have a particular question that we want to share with everyone during the Q&A, so we will hopefully see you again and thanks so much again for being here, Sarah.
Sarah: Thank you, Kathi.
Kathi: My pleasure. All right, turning to the main topic at hand today, I'm going to set the stage for everything that we're about to hear as we go on. Today's webinar is focused on transitioning to a circular economy. What do we mean by that? In simple terms, it's about a reuse economy in which items are not thrown away but put back into the system where they're used again and again, just like the shippers you heard about from Toad&Co.
Packaging is a great example of the possibilities of a reuse economy. What if packaging became a service instead of a product? In a reuse economy, envelopes, boxes, and containers that we now throw away would go back into the system for reuse. When we talk about the circular or reuse economy, we often talk about plastics because plastic packaging and single-use plastic items, as we just heard about from Jeff Bridges are creating huge amounts of waste in our landfills, our watersheds, and our oceans.
We want to get you activated on your keyboards again like you just did a few minutes ago to find out what you already know about plastic. We're going to do another poll that's specific to testing your plastic knowledge. It should pop up in a moment and I will give you a little bit of time to fill that out. [silence] The questions that you can probably all see. How much trash does the average American produce per year? how much plastic waste has ever been recycled?
Actually not just plastic waste, but plastic in general. How much has been recycled, how much plastic that's in the ocean began on land, and what are some things that we can all do to reduce plastic pollution? Give you another little bit of time to fill that out. Someone just asked in the chat, what is Toad&Co. Toad&Co is a clothing company. They're a national clothing company. We will be providing links to all of the work that all of our speakers are doing when we send out our follow-up email. You will be getting more information about everybody that you're hearing from here. All right. Thank you for taking the poll. While we wait for the results, can we go back to the slides? I will keep going. While we're waiting for the slides to come up, I will just--
Oh, wait. We're already done with the poll? Do you want to keep the results up? Cool. 150 pounds, don't we wish that was the answer to that? It's actually 1,600 pounds, which is pretty sad how much plastic waste has been recycled. Sadly, again, the answer to that is 9%. If you said 10% you were closest to that. You all got this one right, it looks like almost everybody, how much plastic waste that's in the ocean began its life on land? That's about 80%.
The last one is all of the above. Every answer that you put in there was correct and hopefully can take action on something there. Moving on to more about what CEC is doing, CEC and our partners have successfully advocated for regional laws that limit single-use plastics. We have eight laws that limit the distribution of plastic bags, straws, styrofoam, and more. These laws have significantly reduced our waste stream and have influenced state policy.
Our local plastic bag regulations reduced the distribution of plastic bags by more than 150 million in Santa Barbara County each year. Local laws like ours led to the statewide policy that reduces California's distribution by 12 billion bags a year. Someone already asked about this in the Q&A, so I'm excited to share that last year, we supported Goleta's comprehensive regulations that cover many types of single-use plastic, including, for the first time in our area, mylar balloons.
Those balloons have been a big problem in the marine environment for a very long time, but they are getting attention now for catching on power lines and being a potential hazard for power outages or even fires. CEC and our partners have already spoken to other local jurisdictions about amending their plastic laws to include some of Goleta's provisions. That's a very happy me and my cohort, Penny Owens, from Channelkeeper when we were doing public comment for the Goleta law. Happy outcome there.
You can be part of this process by signing up for our policy action network that's run by our policy team. This is Farah from our policy team giving recent public comment at a hearing. We will put a link to that sign-up in the chat. If you sign up for that, those types of actions, you will get notified when there is a hearing in your area for which we would love your assistance.
Last year also saw the passage of SB 54 at the state level. SB 54 focuses on extended producer responsibility, requiring companies to pay for packaging that isn't actually recyclable. It will hopefully bring about positive changes to our current system. What California does often gets copied by other states, so we hope that this will be just the beginning of that extended producer responsibility system in our country.
It does have a long implementation horizon, it takes companies a long time to make those types of changes. We will keep you posted as benchmarks are reached. We focused on this law at our July 2022 webinar, so we will provide a link to that to you if you want to revisit that. We had a statewide expert at that webinar talking about all the ins and outs of SB 54, for you policy wonks out there. There hasn't been-- Whoa, what just happened? Sorry. Can you see me? Can you hear me? Where did I go?
Sarah: Kathi, we can hear and see you.
Kathi: You can? Sorry, my screen just went completely blank. Sorry. Okay, I'm back, even though I was never gone. There hasn't been much action on plastic reduction or reuse systems change at the federal level, sadl. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act was introduced a few years ago but really lacks the political will to move forward. There is greater recognition, however, at the global level with the development of a United Nations treaty on plastic pollution.
The United Nations Environment Assembly passed a resolution last year to end plastic pollution and create a legally binding international agreement by 2024. California is represented by Alejandra Warren, co-founder and executive director of Plastic Free Future. If you're on Instagram, I recommend following Alejandra for updates. We'll put that link in the chat. This UN agreement has been called the most important international, multilateral, environmental deal since the Paris Climate Accord.
The comparison also serves as a reminder to us that plastic is a fossil fuel product. If we are going to fully address climate change, we need to address the plastic pollution crisis at the source. If you want to join the chorus of people encouraging world leaders to act quickly on this UN treaty, please consider signing a petition. We'll add one from Greenpeace to the chat. CEC will provide updates to this exciting treaty as it becomes a reality.
We know that plastic is a fossil fuel product and produces emissions throughout its life cycle, from extraction to production to use. Those who create it and come into contact with it are exposed to toxins that can have serious health implications. By reducing single-use plastic in our lives, we also reduce the harm being caused to frontline communities where people live near petrochemical plants and refineries.
CEC's justice team is developing community-led solutions that protect our most vulnerable populations from the climate impacts we are already experiencing. That work is focused on the engagement of frontline communities that are impacted by many factors, including fossil fuel infrastructure. The fossil fuel industry is pushing to expand plastic production because they are losing market share in other sectors.
Judith Enck from Beyond Plastic calls this the industry's plan B for continued production. Plastic is currently about 8% of global fossil fuel use, and the industry's goal is to increase that to 24%. We can all play a role in thwarting this plan by voting with our dollars for products that tread lighter on the planet. Now it's time to meet our speakers because they are doing great work on plastic reduction, circular systems and environmental education.
I am very pleased to introduce Kiersten Ozhelevskiy, owner of Sunkissed Pantry, a store focused on refilling and reusing that opened in Santa Barbara last year. CEC has partnered with Kiersten on the Earth Day Festival and other events, and we are thrilled to feature her waste reduction business with you here today. Kiersten, it's all yours.
Kiersten Ozhelevskiy: All righty. Hello, everybody. My name is Kiersten, I am the owner of Sunkissed Pantry. I am coming up on my one-year anniversary of being open here in Santa Barbara. I'm a refill shop that offers a whole bunch of really great products for bulk refills. I have everything from bath and beauty supplies, cleaning supplies. I offer loose-leaf teas, spices and grains. I'm really hoping to expand my products in the future for everybody, just because I think it's a really great opportunity for everybody to go plastic-free.
A little bit about-- Sorry, I'm not seeing my slides. I just want to make sure I'm-- Okay. We'll go to the next slide. A little bit about what a refill shop is, for those that don't know, it's a place where you can bring your own containers and/or use containers that we have here and refill it. This eliminates the use of single-use packaging, lots of people love to bring in their glass jars for durability, which is really great.
This helps reduce the use of single-use plastics by creating a dependence on reusable things and reduces our dependence on raw materials so we're not creating more packaging. This will help create that reuse culture. It also helps people or helps companies look towards more durability, durable products, and creating packaging that we can use in the long term. In essence, it actually ends up saving consumers a lot more money by offering products in bulk. We can reduce our prices so that you're not paying for the packaging itself, you're just paying for the products. This is just some small statistics for you guys. 45 % of emissions come from how we produce consumer products.
How we are producing things is affecting the waste that goes into the oceans and everything. 80 % of consumer goods is either burned because of poor design or lack of end-of-life. A lot of consumers or a lot of companies are not thinking about how products are going to be used at the end of their life. That's something we need to shift our focus towards. $460 billion worth of still wearable clothing is being dumped. I'm sure a lot of you have heard about recent Shein controversies.
I don't know if anyone's heard about that, but it is a big issue in waste culture right now is throwing away clothes constantly, just throwing away everything. That's something we need to shift our focus on what is the end of life of all of our products? Some things that we're doing here at Sunkiss Pantry is playing into this circular economy. We want to proudly say that since we have been opened, over 1,179 bottles have been saved from the landfill, and that is being counted through our FillJoy system, which helps us count how many 16-ounce bottles are being refilled. it does it by weight, which is really great.
We can keep track of how many bottles are being saved, and it's just a great reminder and a great inspiration to how many things are being saved from the landfill. Then our partners, one of our biggest partners is Rustic Strength. I get a lot of questions about how we ourselves are playing into the circular economy. One of our biggest partners, Rustic Strength, they're one of the main brands we carry. How it works is we order from them in large containers, 5, 10, 30-gallon vats. When we empty that, we send it back to them.
They clean and sanitize it, and then they fill it up and bring it, and ship it back to us. It's just another way how we can be involved ourselves as a business into a circular economy. Then just refilling yourself is a really great way to get yourself involved in a circular economy. It's being able to reuse those containers over and over again to not create any more waste. Then we also do work with a lot of small companies here in Santa Barbara, even with our candles. Our candles are refillable, and we do create a lot of relationships with small businesses.
Then one thing I wanted to discuss was that we actually just opened up a program for other businesses. Another way we are helping with that is offering small businesses in the area to refill their soaps with us. A great example right now is the Lo Barrow Theater, which is right next to us, has opted into carrying our refillable containers. I go and refill their soaps for them in their bathroom so that they can also participate in this circular economy and reducing their waste as a theater, so they don't have to buy a bunch of plastic for their bathrooms, which is really great.
I just want to talk. I know we do hear a lot about big businesses needing to make changes, and I do think that that is very, very important for large companies to take accountability. I think how we really need to enact change is voting with our dollar. That means we do need to take some of the responsibility. It's about shifting this mindset of reduce, reuse, recycle and taking out that recycle part and putting it at the very, very end and introducing a reduce, reuse, refill mindset in our own lives.
I think that it's just very important for us to. If we can collectively introduce that mindset into our everyday lives, then maybe these big businesses will listen to us and they'll stop producing-- They'll produce less of it if we are buying less of it. It goes on both ways. The thing that we can do right now for ourselves is to get ourselves involved in the reuse culture. Some things that you can do as a consumer is shopping secondhand, obviously shopping refillables. Composting and home gardening is a great way.
If you're getting things in compostable containers, you can put those in your home compost and that's a way to get rid of it. Because if you're putting those compostable items in your trash, it's not getting composted. The best way to do that is at home. You can also look to local efforts. There's lots of local companies. Marburg has a great program here in Santa Barbara where they do take compostable packaging and they do compost it for us. You can look into that.
I know Ablet's cleaning company, they do also take once a month, they take plastic recycling. If you clean it and bring it to them, they do responsibly recycle it for us. You can get involved in things like that. You can also get involved in local beach cleanups. I do also want to say that again, it's great to get involved in local beach cleanups because we do need to clean up the oceans and everything. What we really need to do is stop plastic at the source.
You can clean up all the beaches in the world, but if you're still continuing to buy plastic, then it's going to still end up on the beaches. We just need to shift our consumer mindsets into how we can participate as a whole in this circular economy. I want to leave this little quote here for you guys. If it can't be reduced, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned, or removed from production.
Just a little quote to think about and shifting into a conscious consumer mindset and be mindful of what you are buying as a consumer and think again about that end of life and where is that going to go at the end of the day and how can I put it back into use? If you can't, then maybe it's something that you don't really need to be purchasing. This is just a little bit about my shop. I'm happy to answer any questions that anybody has about how the system works, how you can get involved, and what products I carry, and I'm open to all of that.
Kathi: Thank you, Kiersten. There's a bunch of questions coming through in the Q&A box if you want to address that while you're able during the next presenter. We've sparked a lot of great conversation here, so appreciate that. We will come back to you when we get to the Q&A segment. I'm going to move on now. Thank you to our next speaker from r.Cup. r.Cup is America's number one reuse platform. Last year, they won the prestigious National Reuse Award for the most innovative food and beverage company. If you enjoyed the Earth Day festival beer and wine garden this year, you participated in r.Cup's reuse revolution by drinking out of a reusable cup. r.Cup's clear messaging also guided you to the return bin where you deposited your cup putting it back into their system to be used again. It's my great pleasure to introduce Mac Sellars from r.Cup to tell you more. Thanks, Mac.
Mac Sellars: Hi, everyone. Good to be here. Thanks for the introduction, Kathi. My name is Mac Sellars. I'm the manager of partnerships for r.Cup. I help with new market development as well as oversee our strategic relationships with a variety of clients like governments, cities, nonprofits, other reuse cities, and so on and so forth. r.Cup is a national service provider. We are a provider of reuse services primarily in live events and entertainment but with reach beyond that. Our mission is to build the infrastructure, platform, and movement for the reuse economy. Next slide.
Before we jump in, I just want to level set about the size of the single-use problem that we're facing. The national nonprofit upstream estimates that nearly 1 trillion single-use foodware items are tossed in the US annually. This includes 120 billion-plus disposable cups, of which 16 billion are single-use coffee cups and over 4 billion are single-use cups used at live events every single year. It's estimated that of all the plastic that's ever been produced, only 9% of it has been recycled. That number maintains globally year after year. In the US, it's estimated that might even be lower, between 5% and 6%, so we're dealing with a very substantial global problem. Next slide.
This is why we created r.Cup. r.Cup initially began out of the work of our founder, Michael Martin, who has spent 37 years in sustainability consulting for large brands and live events. He was the guy that people would call up and say, "Hey, I need to make my event sustainable. I need to make my tour sustainable. I need to make my brand sustainable. I don't know how to get there. How can I translate these ideas or these concepts into real movements, into real campaigns, into real brands that have a real tangible impact?" It was out of that work, actually doing consulting for Live Nation and for bands like U2 and Rolling Stones that he came up with the idea of eliminating single-use cups at live events through a reusable option.
We started in 2017 on tour with the band U2. What we did is we offered a reusable cup option. People got their cup with their drink. They could return it to us or take it home. Then we would take all the cups that were used, wash them, and bring them to the next tour stop. This is how we initially tried out the idea and found that people were really, really receptive to it. The bands loved it. The fans loved it. The operators, they loved it, although they wanted some changes. We used this initial period to work out some of the kinks and figure out a perfect model to bring reuse to the masses.
The way our model now works is we've expanded and refined-- We can go on to the next slide. We work with cities. We build wash hubs in economic development zones, hire second-chance employees to create local economic impact and economic impact for people who are disadvantaged. We built these washing and logistics facilities and actually signed up as many clients as we can in the local area with reuse services.
If a client comes to us, it's a music venue, it's a sporting venue locally, they say, "We want to switch. We'll bring all of our materials and provide all of the training and oversight needed to transition to a reuse system." Whether it's training their bartenders and their cleanup crews, it's customized signage, whether it's the consulting in the Environmental Impact Reporting, we do it all. Because we're a local partner in every city that we operate in, we can be there to do any kind of small changes needed to make sure this program really shines.
We have operated in over 100 venues across 70 cities and over 12 countries. We are having a great impact thus far, even in these five years of business even with the COVID pandemic interrupting our services as well. We have already eliminated over 4.5 million single-use cups. This translates to 60,000 plus pounds of plastic, 190 tons of CO2 eliminated, over 670,000 kilowatt-hours of energy saved, over 1.2 million gallons of water saved, and over 230,000 liters of crude oil saved. Next slide.
To see what this looks like in action, we worked actually with Kathi and the CEC on their Earth Day event. Annually, they bring in between 20,00 and 30,000 people to this celebration. They contacted us early this spring and said, "Hey, we want to go reuse. How can we partner with you to make it happen?" We had an absolutely great event with them. We brought in all of our cups and bins, we brought in our team, we trained their folks, educated the consumers with pre-event marketing and signage at the venue, walked around talked to people, gave this comprehensive service to the event and people had a great time.
You can see my teammate, [unintelligible 00:46:39], here in the middle with a huge stack of cups, really hustling to make sure that these get returned and that people around him understand that this is a reusable cup as opposed to something that would get thrown away during the event. From the consumer side, very simple. They would just get the cup with their drink and then instead of throwing it away, they would put it in one of our specially marked bins. You can see one of them in the top left here. That's all they need to worry about. We take care of everything else and make it simple and easy for them. Next slide.
The end results of this activation, we used 5,280 cups and we lost only 38 of them, meaning, that we returned 99%. We had a really excellent return rate for this event. We were able to eliminate over 100 pounds of waste, 668 pounds of CO2, over 2,400 gallons of water, 1,200 kilowatt-hours of energy saved, and 420 liters of crude oil saved. It's a really excellent event. Really happy to partner with the CEC on it.
Turning it over to you all, if we can go to my next slide. If you would like to get involved, if you have an event in your community, if you are a venue or event operator, if you have a museum, if you have a corporate campus, we're happy to talk with you. Feel free to reach out to me. Here you can see my number and my email. We also have on our website an outreach form. We'd love for anyone to reach out and talk to us about their event.
Also, I'm going to put it in the chat, we have a list and a form to join our r.Cup crew. Sometimes we do these really large festivals where we need a little bit of extra help in terms of staffing, and we bring in folks who reach out to us and are interested to help us out. You can sign up in that form and we can potentially get you included in a local festival so you can see how it works in person, participate in reuse, and make a change.
Thank you so much. Looking forward to your questions.
Kathi: Thanks, Mac, very much. Can you hear me? I can't see myself, so I don't know if I'm back on. I do have a quick--
?Speaker: We hear you, Kathi.
Kathi: Can you hear me? Thanks, [unintelligible 00:49:19]. I have a quick follow-up question for you. We were thrilled to have our first zero-waste beer garden ever at Earth Day this year and working with you. It was really seamless and a great experience. We would love to extend that opportunity to our food court where we still use a lot of disposable plates and tableware. Do you have any solutions planned for things like that?
Mac: Yes, for sure. On one of my prior slides, you might have seen an r.World logo. Our company name is actually r.World. That is our umbrella name for everything that we're doing. r.Cup is our primary service and product, although we also have r.Ware and r.Turn. r.Ware is for foodware. r.Turn is for our tech platform. Our idea is to continue expanding these products and services as we continue expanding. Single-use is everywhere, so everywhere single-use is that's where we're going to be. We've done a lot of trialing of r.Wares, the containers in restaurant settings, particularly. We were exploring the open-loop systems where people were actually taking them out, bringing them back in. We did put a pause on those operations. We don't feel that anyone has fully cracked the code on how to make those systems truly work.
In closed systems or closed-loop, we are actively looking to implement. Environments where people aren't taking the containers out, but they stay on the ground, so whether at a corporate campus, food court, things like that, we're hoping to continue expanding the r.Ware services. That's definitely something that we can look into next year. Just a small note, we also have food boats. For things like hot dogs at stadiums and arenas, it's another product area included in our r.Ware product line.
Kathi: Awesome. Food boat, I love that. I want to eat food out of a boat. [laughs] It sounds really fun. Thanks again, Mac. We have so many questions coming in the Q&A. If you want to address any of those in writing in case we don't get to them during our live session, you are very welcome to do that. Thanks again for all that great information. There's a lot of opportunity in closed-loop systems. Think about airports and hospitals and so many institutions where people don't leave that we could really make a dent in disposable waste reduction just from doing that. That's really exciting to hear.
Next up, I'm going to introduce Lindsay Johnson, the executive director of Explore Ecology. Lindsay has been at the helm of Explore Ecology since 2014, and she has been on staff since 2004. Explore Ecology is an environmental education nonprofit located here in Santa Barbara. You may already know this, but for those who don't, Explore Ecology, when it was known as Art From Scrap, began as a CEC program, and they continue to be a very important CEC partner. Welcome in, Lindsay.
Lindsay Johnson: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for that intro, Kathi. Good to be here. All right. I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to share the ways in which Explore Ecology contributes to a circular economy and addresses the single-use plastic issue. We do this through waste reduction lessons, environmental and watershed education in school by composting food waste in school gardens, and of course, at the one and only Art From Scrap creative reuse store. Next slide, please.
All right, I am going to start with our environmental education program. You may have seen our educators in school at community events, in gardens, or on the beach. They teach over 20,000 students a year at 75 schools. Our waste reduction programming includes a Replace the Waste series, where elementary students learn about the importance of waste diversion with a fantastic new opportunity for students to see where our trash goes by visiting the Tajigua's landfill and the Resource Recovery Center.
They get to experience firsthand the amount of waste taken to the landfill and the ways that it is managed upon arrival. A highlight of this experience is seeing the resource center that began operation in 2021 separating out all of the various materials in our waste streams so that they can be properly recycled, composted, or landfilled, our last choice there. All right, next slide, please.
Explore Ecology School Gardens Program engages over 14,000 elementary and junior high students each year at 30 schools, giving children the opportunity to learn how to grow organic food and connect with the natural world during their school day. The students have weekly lessons in their beautiful outdoor garden classrooms where they learn how to nurture and care for plants and taste food that they helped grow. This, in turn, encourages more local food access and a greater understanding of ecology. A really fun activity for them is that we have large-scale worm bins in school gardens and compost food waste from the cafeterias, creating a wonderful closed-loop system on school campuses with the nutrient-rich compost then being added back into the garden beds to nourish our plants. Kids love that part. Next slide, please.
All right, Art From Scrap. Hopefully, you're all very familiar with the Art From Scrap creative reuse store, and if not, please come in and visit us. This is our flagship program and is open to our entire community. As mentioned in Kathi's intro, this program was a component of CEC in the early 2000s and has been a cornerstone of waste reduction and creative reuse in our community since 1990, keeping literally tons and tons of reusable materials out of the landfill.
Art From Scrap has been inspiring our community to reuse for decades. You may recognize, I know there's been trouble seeing things, but I'm going to hold these up. You may recognize these. Does anyone know what they are? Go ahead and post it in the chat. They are skate wheel shavings donated from Skate 1. This is one of our store's most popular items from professional artists like Dianna Cohen, of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, who repurposes plastic shopping bags into art. Here's a piece of her beautiful artwork. She uses a sewing machine and plastic bags from different local stores to create artwork. Two children's artwork who attend our Crafternoon, oh, wait, it's backwards, our Crafternoon art workshop. This is a fun little puppet that we created.
Assemblage artist Calder Kamin creates plants and animals for art installations out of plastic waste. You can see some flowers she's created here. We have a sprayed paint lid and garden hoses, crocheting out of plastic bags. When you come into Art From Scrap to visit, you can see the entire garden, which this is a piece of with a friendly little critter that is in it also. It's a fun thing to check out when you're here. All of the materials at Art From Scrap are donated to us by our community, and we work hard to keep it organized and accessible for reselling it to you, the public. Our school materials program offers low-cost supplies to teachers and schools, so they don't buy new plastic, single-use items. We also host field trips, art workshops, and birthday parties, all inspiring folks to get creative and reuse materials. Next slide, please.
Okay, speaking of getting creative, you have to come check out our new Explore Ecology Makerspace and stay tuned for the grand opening on September 8th. I am so super excited about this latest evolution of Art From Scrap. The Makerspace will increase the esthetics and durability of projects made in our workshop. It is so fun to see what our clients are creating with the material that they find from Art From Scrap. Next slide, please.
In addition to the programs that I've spoken about, Explore Ecology also has a robust watershed education program. Our team of environmental educators host field trips to the Watershed Resource Center at Arroyo Burro Beach to ensure that kids see and experience firsthand the environment that we're asking them to help protect. While in their visits, students learn about alternatives to single-use plastics and the harsh impact that these have on our marine environments. My favorite part of these visits is that the students then have the opportunity to put their learning into action by heading down to the sand and doing a beach cleanup to ensure that Arroyo Burro Beach stays clean and healthy. We not only educate about alternatives to single-use plastics and waste reduction, we offer monthly Explore #cology beach cleanups on the second Sunday of each month at Arroyo Burro Beach. So far this year, volunteers have picked up over 1,150 pounds of litter. We invite you to visit the WRC, Watershed Resource Center, during cleanup hours to see the interactive displays and learn more about our local watersheds. Next slide, please.
One of our biggest impacts to support our beautiful coastline is coordinating coastal cleanup day for the County of Santa Barbara. Last year, over 1,300 volunteers picked up over 8,000 pounds of litter at 30 sites from Guadalupe to Carpinteria in just one day. It's pretty incredible. Thank you all for participating in that. Join us this year on Sunday, September 23rd at your favorite beach or park.
Overall, Explore Ecology is so proud to be contributing to the circular economy through environmental education and creative reuse, and we look forward to many, many more years of supporting our community in this way. Thank you.
Kathi: Thank you, Lindsay. Great to hear about your new workshop. I didn't know about that so [crosstalk]
Lindsay: It's really fun. We come see it. [laughs]
Kathi: I will. Always cool to learn new things in this setting. I just heard a study, and it's one of those things where you wonder why they had to do a study, that children who spend time in nature are far more likely to become climate activists maybe even while they're still children, so it's just so important to get kids out there in nature and understanding what needs to be done, especially with the beach cleanups. We've taken our climate stewards on a couple of beach cleanups including with you, so it's also great for adults to go help clean up the beach because we're not going to get out there and clean up the oceans so the best way we can address the ocean pollution is to pick it up off the beach.
Lindsay: Absolutely.
Kathi: Thanks for all your great work on that.
Lindsay: Thank you, Kathi.
Kathi: We have had such a robust session in the Q&A box, so thank you all for engaging so deeply and for asking such great questions. I'm going to address a couple of them now because we're running into time and we want to make sure that we have time to give you information at our close. I want to just thank the speakers for popping into the Q&A and answering those questions directly.
I did see a couple of questions about plastic medical waste. While that is something it's such a small fraction of all of the other single-use plastic that's out there, particularly just disposable products like bags and cups to-go cups and things like that, that we don't generally include that just because it is so important to keep people safe and healthy and that has become relied upon for that purpose.
I don't know of any-- Someone was asking about the little bottles for medication and is there a way to recycle those? I don't think that there is. We shared the stat earlier in the poll and Max shared the stat as well that only 9% of plastic actually gets recycled. It's generally the really big items that get recycled. There is no, that I know of, plan for reuse for pill bottles because I think that would run into a lot of different regulatory systems barriers in order to do that. It was a great question and I appreciate when people bring that up.
Someone else also brought up the expense of some of the reuse systems that we've talked about. What we did when we worked with r.Cup was we got a grant. This is attractive to people who are in the funding space and want to help move circular systems into place. The El Gato Channel Foundation that CEC works with frequently and is a great partner for us on plastic reduction, they supported our use of r.Cup. Switching to these kinds of systems can open up those opportunities as well.
Also, just, in general, for expense of consumer products, if you don't have a refill store near you or if you find it more expensive, more that you want to spend, just buy the powdered version. If you buy the powdered version of dish soap or laundry soap, you are cutting out the plastic because you're cutting out the water. It also takes a lot less energy to ship around, things that don't weigh as much and don't use plastic. That's a benefit there. That's a way to engage at whatever level that you can. I just wanted to throw that out there.
I'm going to check the questions. I think we've covered most of the questions. If we didn't cover your questions we will share answers to them in our resources toolkit email that you'll receive next week along with the webinar recording. We will also include all of our speakers contact info in case you want to follow up with them directly. We have another poll. We've been engaging you well today. We've got a quick poll about what you got from today's webinar. Then we also would love for you to share in the chat what are your biggest takeaways from today.
While you do that, I'll give a round of thanks. Thank you to our wonderful speakers, Sarah, Kirsten, Mac, and Lindsay. We really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us today. Also, a thanks to our interpreters, Nira and Yaya of Rooted Language Services for interpreting for us today, and to Hillary Allen from the City of Santa Barbara who supported us in the chat and the Q&A. Thank you to our sponsors, the City of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Clean Energy, the Santa Barbara Independen, and to the Johnson Ohana Foundation for their program support.
Free events like these are just one of the ways the Community Environmental Council works to advance rapid and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. Events like these are only made possible because of donations from individuals like you. As you consider your yearly investments, no matter what the amount, we hope you will consider a gift to our work. CEC is one of only a handful of nonprofits in Santa Barbara County to hold the highest ratings possible on both Charity Navigator and GuideStar. Visit the QR code on your screen or visit cecsb.org/donate. Another way you can support CEC is by sharing what you love about our work, how we have impacted you or the broader community. We'll share a link in the chat if you'd like to share your story. We love a storytelling.
The follow-up email that I just mentioned will also include upcoming events and opportunities but here are a few of them. We invite those of you in the area to attend our second annual Plastic Free July Expo next Thursday evening. We are bringing that to you in partnership with Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, Explore Ecology, and Sunkissed Pantry who are with us today. We'll have tables at the Expo along with the Cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta and several other waste reduction businesses and nonprofits. We will have prize giveaways and light refreshments and we promise you a fun evening. Please register to attend as space is limited and we have already had a great response.
Our next Climate Stewards class begins September 13th. Registration is already open on our website. This will be cohort number eight of this course. CEC's Environmental Hub is now open and available for meetings and events, which we are already doing there. We have a special section on our website with all the details about the Hub. Give you a sec to catch up. There we go. There's the Hub.
Thank you all again for tuning in to our CEC webinar series. If you haven't already, please join our newsletter and engage with us on your favorite social media channel. We will leave this slide up for a little bit in case you'd like to scan the QR code or jot down our social media info. We will also send this and all the resources we shared today in that follow-up email. This brings our webinar to a close. We're giving you back five minutes in your day. How about that? Have a wonderful afternoon and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you so much.
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