Coastal Clean-up
On Saturday, Sept.16 2017, the international Coastal Cleanup Day took place, drawing thousands of participants throughout the world. Many Samo students and faculty took part in this day, including teacher Benjamin Kay and his students, teacher Trevor Parker, teacher Mariam Shafley and her students, Delians Honor Society members and ROP. From 9 a.m. to noon, Samo fiercely worked to help make a change in our environment. Several hundred people met at tower 20 at the Santa Monica beach, along with thousands of people meeting at different destinations along the coast. Ferris Kawar lead the cleanup near Bay Street along with the help of Kay, who has now been a part of this cleanup for 12 years. “He and I gave everybody a briefing about why the trash is there. The trash that we pick up off of the beach is usually not mostly from people who leave trash behind on the beach- it’s usually from rivers and storm drains that empty into the ocean. Then, over time a lot of those pollutants wash back up to our shores due to waves, tides and currents,” Kay said.One of the main spots that Samo students went to was the Pico-Kenter Storm Drain, where there were large amounts of trash. This included plastics bottles, plastic containers, styrofoam packaging, styrofoam peanuts and styrofoam clamshells. To spread the awareness of this issue Kay posted a picture of the trash in the storm drain on Facebook. “This was a really important post because there is a push right now from environmental scientists and environmental activists to ban polystyrene or styrofoam, both at the LA city and county levels as well as at the state levels. I’m very proud that our city of Santa Monica has already banned restaurants from giving out styrofoam,” Kay said. Santa Monica was one of the early adopters of the styrofoam ban and now there are over 120 cities who have banned polystyrene food wear. Environmental scientists and activists are pushing on this law for two reasons: people don't properly dispose of styrofoam and polystyrene comes from styrene, such as a red solo cup, which is really toxic.Even if human do dispose of these products in an environmental friendly way, these non-biodegradable products go to a landfill, where they will stay forever. An alternative option is burning these products in an incinerator, where toxic fumes, such as carbon monoxide and dioxin, go into the air. People who live close to either a landfill or an incinerator, otherwise known as cancer alleys, have been proven to have an increase in birth defects and cancer due to the constant exposure and inhalation these products’ toxic fumes. However, the number one most commonly found piece of trash on a beach at any cleanup, including Coastal Cleanup Day, is the cigarette. There were a couple hundred cigarettes picked up by the people at tower 20 alone. Fortunately, Santa Monica has made smoking on the beach illegal, however cigarettes still enter the ocean through storm drains. “In previous Coastal Cleanup Days, we are talking about numbers in the millions of cigarettes removed off of our beaches, but you can only imagine how many didn't get removed from the beach and ended up in the ocean,” Kay said. Like other teachers, Kay uses these community events to transform them into inquiry based projects to really help students understand what environmental issues are happening locally and how to help mitigate the problem. Whether it is through using reusable products, or refusing to use products that are bad for the environment, there is always a way to help. “Just being a part of the solutions and seeing with their own eyes that this is something that we can all contribute to… There’s light bulbs going off, sometimes for students that lightbulb goes off really early and they get it right away but others take time… We don't protect what we don't understand and we don't protect what we don't love and once we understand the problem, you can start protecting what you love,” Kay said.