Green Sangha announces a conference, Rethinking Plastics 201, for concerned citizens in Marin County and the Bay Area. Our goal is to increase understanding of the plastics plague and to empower citizen-activists, business leaders, and civic officials to make changes at home, in the marketplace, and in the halls of government.

Schedule:

• Thursday, Jan 21, 7:00-9:30 pm. Symposium: Awakening the Dreamer: an introduction to the challenges and opportunities of our age. Led by the Pachamama Alliance. Environmental Classroom, Marin Sanitary Service, 535 Jacoby Street, San Rafael, CA. Donation requested (all donations over $10 will receive a copy of the newly released Sustainable World Sourcebook published by Vinit Allen).
• Friday, Jan 22, 7:30-9 pm. Public lecture: Rethinking Plastics, Rethinking Our Lives. Speakers: Debbie Raphael, San Francisco Department of the Environment, toxics expert; Eben Schwartz, Marine Debris Program Manager, California Coastal Commission. Location: Next Key Center, 1385 N. Hamilton Parkway, Novato, 94949.Sponsored by Whole Foods Market, San Rafael. Free.
• Saturday, Jan 23, 10 am – 5 pm. Workshop: Ending the Plague of Plastic Pollution. Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership, 555 Northgate Drive, San Rafael. Fee: $50.

Saturday Conference Agenda:

• 10:00 Plastics in Our Ocean: A Report from Midway Island
• 10:20 Plastics Chemistry, Waste-to-Energy, and Global Climate
• 11:00 Toxicity of Plastics
• 11:15 Bio-sourced Plastics: Their Nature and Their Potential
• 12:00 The Heart of Sustainable Activism: Awakening and Purpose
• 12:40 Zero Waste Lunch
• 1:30 Blueprint for Change: Four Steps to End the Plague
• 1:45 Extended Producer Responsibility
• 2:40 Cradle-to-Cradle: How Do We Close the Loop?
• 3:30 From Personal Journey to Systemic Change
• 4:15 Putting It All Together
• 4:45 Meditation
• 5:00 Networking

Speakers include:

• Manuel Maqueda, Environmental Strategist, Co-founder Plastic Pollution Coalition
• Solvig Palm-Nicholls, Chemistry instructor and past president Environmental Forum of Marin
• Stuart Moody, Director, Rethinking Plastics
• Glen Baldwin, Bioplastics Specialist, CalRecycle
• Jonathan Gustin, MFT, founder of Green Sangha
• Chrise de Tournay Birkhahn, Executive Director, EcoMom Alliance
• Heidi Sanborn, co-founder and director, California Product Stewardship Council (www.calpsc.org)
• Thomas Wright, Sustainable Business Practices (www.sustainablebiz.com)
• Beth Terry, Green Sangha board of directors and web activist (fakeplasticfish.com)

See speaker bios below.

Eliminating plastic pollution in California

Green Sangha is working with County and city governments on plastics reduction measures such as polystyrene bans and green purchasing policies. We are also promoting a state-level Extended Producer Responsibility framework as a linchpin to sustainability. This winter our primary action is a county-wide collaboration with the County of Marin, EcoMom Alliance, iReuse.com, and Teens Turning Green to ban single-use bags at all retail stores. BYOBag Marin is the name of this collaborative effort, which includes Bring Your Own Bag Day each third Saturday of the month until Earth Day 2010.

Rethinking Plastics 201 is our major event in January – a time to bring citizens, business owners, and policy makers together to consider the implications of plastic pollution and chart our path to a sustainable world.

To register, please contact Elizabeth Little at (510) 532-6574 or send a message via our Contact Form.

Speakers

Debbie Raphael is the Program Manager for the City & County of San Francisco’s Toxics Reduction and Green Building Programs. In this capacity she is responsible for working with City agencies, local businesses, and San Francisco residents to reduce the use of toxic chemicals and implement the City’s award-winning Integrated Pest Management, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing, and Green Building programs.

Debbie was part of the team of City staff and community members that crafted San Francisco’s Precautionary Principle Ordinance and is helping lead the effort to implement the principle within City government. Debbie also led the implementation of San Francisco’s ban on phthalates in children’s products and is working on further Extended Producer Responsibility and green chemistry initiatives.

Earlier, Debbie worked for the City of Santa Monica and implemented that city’s far-reaching IPM and Toxics Reduction Programs. She has presented her work at numerous professional and technical meetings and has helped public agencies and school districts across the country institute similar environmental programs. Debbie received her Master’s degree in Plant Physiological Ecology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Eben Schwartz has been a staff member of the California Coastal Commission since 2000, running Marine Debris and Public Outreach programs for the Public Education Program.

Eben directs California Coastal Cleanup Day, California’s largest volunteer event. Eben also serves as the Chair of the California Ocean Protection Council’s Marine Debris Steering Committee, in which role he helped craft and pass the Council’s Resolution on Marine Debris and its corresponding Implementation Strategy. Eben also serves as the Chair of the Marine Debris Action Coordination Team for the West Coast Governors’ Agreement on Ocean Health, which is currently drafting an overall marine debris strategy to be used as guidance for comprehensive marine debris programs in Washington, Oregon, and California.

Prior to his work with the Coastal Commission, Eben worked in conservation programs at the Sierra Club, at both the local and national levels. Eben recently completed a two-year program as one of the inaugural members of the Catto Fellowship with the Aspen Institute, designed for emerging leaders in the environment and energy sector. Eben holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University.

Manuel Maqueda is an environmental strategist fascinated with future and emerging environmental issues. Manuel works in stealth mode in several environmental ventures and is the cofounder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition http://plasticpollutioncoalition.org/ a nonprofit organization created with the vision of a world free of plastic pollution and of the toxic impacts of plastic on humans, the environment, wildlife and marine life.  A Social Media hound, Manuel is a reporter, a speaker, and a op-ed writer on citizen journalism and the transformations in human communication, and takes part in several social media projects such as PeriodismoCiudadano.com, BlooSee.com, Public Media Collaborative, Nuestra Voz, and Spot.us. Educated in Spain and France, Manuel holds a graduate degree in Macroeconomics, as well as a Law degree.   http://manuelmaqueda.com/

In September 2009, Manuel took part in Midway Journey, an expedition of 5 media artist to Midway Atoll led by environmental photographer Chris Jordan http://chrisjordan.com/ to documents the effects of plastic pollution on baby albatrosses. The images and videos from Midway Journey have been featured by Discovery Channel, The Guardian, Newsweek and other international media outlets, and have spread virally over the Internet. http://www.midwayjourney.com/

Solvig Palm-Nicholls B.Sc. grew up and was educated in Sweden. She received a BSc degree in Chemistry, Botany, and Zoology at the University in Lund in 1970.  She moved to Scotland with her husband and new-born daughter in 1974, and stayed there for 25 years.  While there, she initially worked as a research scientist and ended up teaching chemistry and biology in a Scottish high school for 16 years.  She moved to USA and Marin County in 2000.  Solvig graduated from the Environmental Forum of Marin (EFM) in 2001, and served on the Board of EFM for 7 years, holding a variety of positions, including president.  She moved back to Sweden in 2008, where she continues pursuing her environmental interests, including zero waste and energy conservation.

Stuart Moody, M.A., Rethinking Plastics Campaign Director and Board President of Green Sangha.

Stuart received a B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology at USF. As an experienced somatic educator, he teaches yoga and co-directs teacher training for Young Imaginations.

With Green Sangha founding member Andy Peri, Stuart initiated the Rethinking Plastics Campaign in Marin County, which has been a major force in raising civic awareness of the plague of plastic pollution.  He advises the Marin County Fair on green initiatives and is a member of San Rafael Clean, a litter eradication program.

Glen Baldwin is a Recycling Specialist with the newly minted California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (also known as CalRecycle). Glen works in the Sustainable Materials and Research (SuMR) Section whose mission is to help improve the environmental profile of plastic materials that are used in packaging. SuMR works in collaboration with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to conduct research on the life-cycle implications of these packaging materials. The focus of Glen’s research has been on the role of bioplastics used for packaging in California and the impacts they will have on the recycling infrastructure in the state.

Glen received his BS degree in Physical Science from Humboldt State University back in the early nineties. While attending HSU, he served as the director for on-campus recycling and worked closely with the Arcata Community Recycling Center. Glen taught chemistry and earth science for almost a decade at Roseville High School and Canyon Del Oro High School in Tucson. He helped to develop a chemicals recycling program in the Roseville school district and was an early proponent of integrating principles of Green Chemistry into the curriculum for the district chemistry program.

Jonathan Gustin, MA, MFT is a purpose guide, integral mentor, psychotherapist and spiritual teacher. He is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice with offices in San Francisco and San Rafael.

Jonathan teaches Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Mind-Body Medicine, and Integral Life Practice at San Francisco and San Rafael Kaiser Permanente. He has also co-led day long programs with human potential pioneer George Leonard and depth psychologist Bill Plotkin.

Jonathan founded Green Sangha in 2000, a spiritually engaged environmental activist organization with chapters in the Sonoma County, the East Bay, Marin County and San Francisco. He also founded the San Francisco Integral Awakening Center (SF IAC) in 2003. The center’s Integral Awakening Group, has been a community for students interested in exploring different sides of Spiritual Awakening. (www.integralawakeningcenter.com)

Heidi Sanborn is an independent consultant working half time as the Executive Director of the California Product Stewardship Council (CPSC) and as National Outreach Director for the Product Policy Institute.  Prior to working for the CPSC, Heidi was a Senior Manager at R3 Consulting Group Inc. in Sacramento California.  Her work history includes projects such as designing household battery collection curbside programs as well as sharps and universal waste collection strategies.

Ms. Sanborn became interested in Product Stewardship in 2000 when she served as Technical Advisor to California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) Chair Linda Moulton-Patterson.  Ms. Sanborn later worked as an independent consultant to the Product Stewardship Institute to assist in the Paint Product Stewardship Initiative.  In the fall of 2006, Ms. Sanborn went on to work with R3 Consulting Group and was the primary author of two documents:  the Sonoma Extended Producer Responsibility Implementation Plan (2/07) and the Contractor’s report to the CIWMB Framework for Evaluating End-of-Life Product Management Systems in California (7/07).

Ms. Sanborn is a graduate of the University of California at Davis with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science – Public Service, and a Master’s of Public Administration from the University of Southern California.

Beth Terry blogs at fakeplasticfish.com about ways to reduce our plastic waste and plastic consumption. Her interest in plastic pollution began in June of 2007 when she first saw a photo of a dead albatross chick filled with plastic pieces and vowed to give up as much plastic — especially single use disposable plastic — as possible. On her blog, she tracks her own plastic waste each month, ever seeking to decrease its amount, and writes about the plastic-free alternatives she finds.  Last year, her personal plastic waste was less than 4% of the national average.

In April of 2008, after discovering that her Brita plastic water filter cartridges could not be recycled in North America, Beth started the Take Back the Filter campaign to urge Brita to practice Extended Producer Responsibility and take back and recycle its cartridges. In November 2008, the company partnered with Preserve and Whole Foods to do just that.

Beth is a board member of Green Sangha, an adviser to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, and a contributing editor to BlogHer, the web site for women who blog.