Students supporting a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags held a press conference Wednesday morning in Meyerhoff Park to make their case to the public.
About 20 students from California Public Interest Research Group, and interns from the Monterey Bay Aquarium shared reasons they think people should support Proposition 67. If passed, the proposition would uphold a statewide ban on plastic bags signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014.
Several large plastic bag manufacturers and chemical companies from Texas and North Carolina, among other states, have donated nearly $3 million to overturn the plastic bag ban. According to the Sacramento Bee, the “no” campaign has raised nearly twice as much as the “yes” campaign.
[Related: Citywide plastic bag ban impacts UCLA, Westwood locations]
Speakers at the press conference announced they will table and canvass around campus to get students to pledge to vote yes on the proposition.
CALPIRG collected about 6,000 signatures in 2014 in support of the law that Brown eventually signed.
Rhea Singh, a CALPIRG intern and first-year economics student, said she thinks students should work together to make positive environmental change.
“We need to do our part as millennials to fix our environment,” Singh said.
Dahlia Alamy, a third-year environmental science student, said CALPIRG’s main goal for the campaign season is to inform students about the merits of a plastic bag ban.
“This proposition needs to be upheld,” Alamy said. “(The plastic bag ban) already passed, but big corporations (from out of state) paid billions of dollars to get (the ban) back on the ballot. Ultimately, if people vote no, this will kill ecosystems and lead to a domino effect throughout the planet.”
Conservation groups and scientists have said marine animals that eat plastic bags end up choking on them or starving. Sea turtles in particular eat the bags because they look like jellyfish, which are turtles’ natural prey.
Los Angeles County is one of about 150 communities that have already banned single-use carry out plastic bags.
Contributing reports from Isabella Welch, Daily Bruin contributor.