Statewide Plastics Monitoring Strategy: Community Engagement
Welcome!
If you are a community member interested in plastics and California's environment, then this page is for you. We invite you to peruse the information shared below as well as information on the primary project page.
What follows is a description of the opportunities, as a community member, to engage in the development of a statewide plastics monitoring plan.
Purpose and Goals
The purpose of early public engagement in the development of the Monitoring Strategy is multifaceted and includes the following objectives:
- Increase public awareness and education on the challenges and impacts of plastics in state waters.
- Provide information on the need for, and role of, a statewide Monitoring Strategy.
- Present an opportunity to help shape a statewide monitoring program based on community priorities, concerns, and resources.
- Specifically target and ensure outreach to underserved, underrepresented, and/or disadvantaged communities.
- Offer information on existing local programs or efforts that may be utilized or coordinated as part of the Monitoring Strategy.
- Provide comments on a draft Monitoring Strategy.
Equity and Inclusion Goals
The California Ocean Protection Council (OPC) has an explicit commitment to equity as reflected in OPCs Equity Plan (October 2022). Explicit goals identified in the plan include:
- Goal 1: Establish and implement more equitable and sustainable community engagement and funding methods to expand and enhance opportunities for ocean and coastal projects, policies, and research.
- Goal 2: Create a more inclusive workplace through creative and equitable employee recruitment and retention, building staff fluency on equity and environmental justice, and increasing internal staff capacity.
- Goal 3: Lead equitable ocean and coastal policymaking in California.
- Goal 4: Lead the state in a comprehensive approach to coastal and ocean science through intentional investments in research and monitoring that value and integrate broader knowledge sources.
To help achieve these explicit goals, all OPC engagement efforts in this plan will make deliberate efforts to identify and engage underserved, underrepresented, and/or disadvantaged communities. These efforts will include:
- Consulting with public stakeholders from these communities to identify additional strategies to facilitate participation in engagement activities.
- Potentially enlisting/contracting stakeholder(s) to assist with outreach and solicitation for participation.
- Anticipating and accommodating translation for meetings and informational materials.
- Making multiple attempts to personally engage key stakeholders (such as phone calls and emails) beyond the general notifications to the public.
- Continuous consideration of input from underserved, underrepresented, and/or disadvantaged communities.
Desired Stakeholder Input
It is understood that stakeholders may possess varying degrees of understanding of the issues and/or awareness of existing efforts regarding plastics monitoring or mitigation efforts, therefore it is important to highlight the types of input that may be the most impactful to the development of the Monitoring Strategy.
Written input can be submitted by contacting us at [email protected].
Public meetings: OPC and SFEI will hold statewide and regionally focused public meetings to present an overview of the project and gather feedback at the early stages of this project. While members of the public are welcome to join any of these meetings, please note that the presented material and facilitated discussion will be consistent across all meetings. Regional meetings will be grouped by county as listed below, and members of the public are welcome to select the group(s) most relevant to their communities and work.
- Statewide: March 19, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Register for this Zoom meeting - Statewide: March 20, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Register for this Zoom meeting
- Northern Region: March 27, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Del Norte, Siskiyou, Modoc, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Lassen, Tehama, Plumas, Mendocino, Lake, Glenn, Butte, Colusa, Yolo, Yuba, Sutter, Sierra, Nevada, Placer, El Dorado Counties
Register for this Zoom meeting - San Francisco/Central Region: March 28, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Solano, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey Counties
Register for this Zoom meeting - Central Valley (Upstream Watersheds): April 2, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Amador, Alpine, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Merced, Mariposa, Mono, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, Inyo, Kern Counties
Register for this Zoom meeting - Southern Region: April 3, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Imperial Counties
Register for this Zoom meeting
Dates:
2024
Programs and Focus Areas:
Microplastics
Environmental Informatics Program
Software Engineering
Primary Project
Statewide Plastics Monitoring Plan & Strategy
Plastics, in their various chemical composition and sizes, pose serious challenges to the vitality of California's ecosystems. Once escaped into the environment, plastic contamination persists for very long periods and breaks down into ever smaller pieces, becoming more readily available to wildlife and populations who live, work, and play in those same habitats.
Related Projects, News, and Events:
California Trash Monitoring Methods Project (Project)
The California Ocean Protection Council (OPC), in close partnership with the State Water Board, has recognized the importance of standard methods for trash monitoring and has funded this project. The Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) and San Francisco Bay Estuary Institute (SFEI) have partnered up to test multiple trash monitoring methods with a goal of developing a library of methods with known levels of precision, accuracy, and cross-comparability of results, and linking these methods to specific management questions.
Microplastic Pollution in San Francisco Bay (Project)
Plastic pollution is gaining global recognition as a threat to the resilience and productivity of ocean ecosystems. However, we are only just beginning to understand the scope and impacts of microplastic particles (less than 5 mm) on coastal and ocean resources, and the San Francisco Bay Area is no exception. A preliminary study of nine water sites in San Francisco Bay, published in 2016, showed greater levels of microplastics than the Great Lakes or Chesapeake Bay.
Development of a Trash Monitoring Method for Tobacco Product Waste (Project)
Smoking has long been known to lead to tobacco-related diseases and harmful health outcomes, including heightened risk of cancer, stroke, and heart disease. Not only is tobacco harmful to individual health outcomes, but it also harmful to the environment. Cigarette butts are the most common form of litter and an estimated 4.5 trillion butts are improperly discarded every year worldwide. Cigarette butts contain at least 4,000 chemicals, and about 50 of these are carcinogenic.
Big problem, small size: Improving methods in microplastics research (News)
When it comes to plastic pollution, that candy wrapper half buried in the dirt is only the tip of the iceberg. Plastic bags, cigarette butts, and bottle caps are not just an eyesore, but over time they break down in the environment, creating small pieces of debris known as microplastics. Microplastics can include anything from synthetic fibers of clothing to industrial pellets from the plastic manufacturing process. Microplastics are now ubiquitous in our environment--found in our air, drinking water, sediment, and in the San Francisco Bay and global ocean.
Groundbreaking SFEI and 5 Gyres microplastics study featured in multiple media outlets (News)
Concurrent with a sold-out symposium on Oct 2nd, several media outlets, including the Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times, have released the articles relating the alarming findings regarding the pervasive presence of microplastics in our surface waters. The issue of microplastics is global in nature. However, the advances in understanding the magnitude of the problem are happening regionally through partnerships with 5 Gyres, the University of Toronto Trash Team, and other notable leaders.
Featured in Forbes: Drones And Artificial Intelligence Help Combat The San Francisco Bay’s Trash Problem (News)
In a partnership with Kinetica, a data analytics start-up, and Oracle, SFEI and SCCWRP leveraged public funding from the California Ocean Protection Council to advance automated trash detection capabilities. The team deployed servers in the @Oracle Cloud to increase performance dynamically. Learn more about this project...
Wired Magazine: A new report shows an astounding amount of microplastics, largely from car tires, are tainting the watershed (News)
Matt Simon from Wired Magazine writes:
San Francisco Bay, like Monterey Bay to its south, is a rare success story in ocean conservation. In the 1960s, three grassroots activists—Sylvia McLaughlin, Kay Kerr, and Esther Gulick—launched Save the Bay, which beat back developers trying to fill in parts of the iconic body of water.
In LA Times: The SF Bay Microplastics report called "the most comprehensive study to date on microplastics in California." (News)
Rosanna Xia with the LA Times relates some important findings from the new microplastics study, released today by SFEI and 5 Gyres:
"Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem — turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters.
Local News: Scientists launch major study of microplastics pollution in San Francisco Bay (News)
SFEI and The 5 Gyres Institute have launched an ambitious two-year research project to monitor San Francisco Bay for pollution in the form of tiny particles of plastic pollution, reports ABC7 News. These microplastic particles are eaten by local fish, according to previous studies, which can expose them to harmful contaminants.
Microplastics study led by Rebecca Sutton is featured in a news story (News)
Rebecca Sutton, senior scientist at SFEI, describes the hazards presented by microplastics in the Bay's waters. "Plastic pollution: Billions of pieces of tiny plastic litter found in San Francisco Bay," a news article by Paul Rogers reports on findings in a recently published study for which Rebecca Sutton serves as lead author. What the researchers discovered, the high degree of plastic contamination, surprised them.
New Microplastic Fact Sheet puts Bay study findings in context (News)
The same week that the U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill to ban microbeads in cosmetic products, the Bay's Regional Monitoring Program releases a fact sheet that describes our recent study on microbeads and other microplastic particles in Bay water and treated wastewater.