Workshop draws top environmentalists.
By Nora Fleming / Special to The Malibu Times
Malibu High School students, guests and environmental activists worked to “Bring It Home Green-Simple Steps to Save the ‘Bu” last Friday in a workshop titled as such, which took place at The Club, Malibu Boys & Girls Club Teen Center. Special guests such as Laurie David, a renowned global warming activist, spoke at the workshop about the current state of the environment and what can be done to change it.
“Every single person in this room is an environmentalist,” said David, who produced the award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” based on former Vice President Al Gore’s global warming campaign.”
“But you have to become activists,” she added.
“Bring It Home Green” is part of a series sponsored by the Boys & Girls Club Ambassadors, well-known Malibu citizens who serve as mentors for students and help facilitate programming to maintain the Club’s success with students. Ambassador and longtime Malibu resident Kelly Chapman Meyer orchestrated Friday’s workshop.
“Any time you commit to something intensely, the universe will help you,” Meyer said to the audience, urging the crowd to “empower [themselves] to impact change.”
Meyer, who serves on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council, worked with legislators to pass the Environmental Education Initiative, which requires all California schools to incorporate environmental education into classrooms, and on project7ten, a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) approved home in Venice of which the sale proceeds will support a variety of green friendly organizations such as Healthy Child, Healthy World.
Meyer credits her “mentor” Laurie David, who she asked to speak at the workshop, as inspiration for becoming involved in environmental activism.
“Every opportunity to turn a teenager into a global activist, I take,” said David, referencing her reason for attending “Bring It Home Green.” “I want them to know it’s their cause, it’s their issue.”
David founded the site www.stopglobalwarming.org and has published a few books on the topic, including “The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming,” which was given to audience members at the workshop.
The activist focused her discussion on the small changes people can make in their lives to making larger changes that would affect the amount of carbon dioxide emissions contributing to the global warming problem on the whole.
“We have a short window to do something about [global warming], but the great news is you can actually do something about it,” she said.
“Reducing your carbon footprint,” as David called it, includes taking shorter showers, using re-usable grocery bags and water bottles, unplugging power cords that are not in use, using recycled paper towels and turning off cars when they idle for longer than 30 seconds.
“You don’t have to do everything, but you can do something,” she said, sharing the statistics that 2.5 million water bottles are thrown out every hour in the United States and 100 billion plastic bags are thrown out each year.
Guest speaker Dr. Marcus Eriksen showed the audience a PowerPoint presentation with information garnered from his studies and sea expeditions with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, a Long Beach-based environmental organization, where he serves as director of research and education.
Eriksen brought in a number of specimens from his journeys, including plastic objects extracted from bird and animal skeletons found on a beach on Midway Island, Hawaii. The objects found within the skeletons included action figure legs, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes, all consumed by the wildlife in their natural habitat. Eriksen estimated that the amount of plastic picked up on his expeditions has more than doubled in a decade.
Jasper Robards, a young environmental activist, spoke to encourage students to band together for once-a-week beach cleanups. (An audience member suggested that trash picked up be deposited in front of City Hall, an idea many members of the crowd seemed to endorse.)
Robards, a New Roads High School student, came to the front of the room wielding two recycled garbage bags full of trash he had picked up on his walk from Zuma Beach, where his mother dropped him off, to The Club, located behind Malibu High School.
“I told you Jasper would ‘Bring it Home,’ to you guys,” Meyer said, smiling.
Post-workshop, many students sported their red reusable grocery bags, gifts from The Club to audience members, and signed petitions to ban plastic bag use in Malibu, an issue Meyer said she feels is cause of immediate concern.
“I think it’s relatively easy for the kids to grasp the low hanging fruit, getting rid of plastic bottles and bags. It is something that is really feasible and do-able.” Meyer said.
She added that she hopes Malibu youth walked away from the “Bring it Home Green” workshop “environmentalists at the least, environmental activists at the most.”
The last Club Ambassador program featured a version of “Project Runway” called ‘My Life is a Runway’ hosted by Cindy Crawford. Malibu residents Kenny G and Laird Hamilton are scheduled for upcoming programs.