Project Economic Refugee

This will be the 3rd annual event that the Heal the Bay staff will have pulled off in L.A. County.  I remember my first “A Day Without A Bag” event like it was yesterday, being assigned to an El Monte site.  I was interviewed by the L.A. Times in 2007 and again in 2008 by La Opinion; my most recent interview with them was about Heal the Bay’s Summer Beach Report Card 2009; of course, this time around I hope that both press outlets will show up for this year’s event to cover the story unfolding at the Downtown L.A. giveaway site in 7th Street & Figueroa Shopping Center.

This year is going to have a pretty cool event: Heal the Bay staff will be doing three live segments with Gayle Anderson (7:50, 8:30 and 9:10) on the Day Without a Bag hoopla on Thursday morning on the KTLA Morning News; for the press release in Spanish, visit this site here.  This year, Heal the Bay will be proud to feature four of its South L.A. community partners as part of its brand-new Healthy Communities Initiative to put the issue of protecting the environment against cronic toxic pollution front-and-center at four different giveaway locations:

Youth Opportunities High’s at 1PM

(Superior Super Warehouse) Superior Super Warehouse 10211 Avalon Blvd. Watts, 90003.

Washington Elementary School’s starting at 9AM

1421 N. Wilmington AVE, Compton 90222.

Wisdom Academy for Young Scientists’s starting at 9AM

706 E. Manchester AVE, Los Angeles, CA 90001.

A.C.U.S.L.A.’s at 9AM (Association of Communities United for South L.A.)

(Numero Uno Market) 9127 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90044.

Personally, I will be going to the Downtown L.A. event just to watch the Thriller Dancers in action … what about you? (well, besides going to the South L.A. events):

Update: for a recap of the day, please visit Heal the Bay’s President’s Mark Gold’s blog here.  To view the video of the “Thriller Dancers” performing at the actual A Day Without A Bag press conference, click here.

Here’s a rustic print ad I did with the help of my friend Saira who modeled for me-thank you Saira! (this was part of an assignment that I did for a Communications class I’m currently taking):

Paper AND plastic are BOTH bad choices for your health

These are the basic elements of the ad:

Attention grabber: bright colors in the fruit and vegetables

Appeal: fruit, healthy living, relatable to you (you could see yourself doing what Saira is doing).

Narrative: the ad asks the question that you often hear at the grocery store: “paper or plastic?” It then urges you to be different, to “step outside of the box” and to support and pick “the better choice”: reusable bags.

Call to action: it asks you to reject the use of paper AND plastic bags so you can instead use reusable bags; it also invites you to visit the site www.healthebay.org/store  so you can get your own reusable bag.  In the future, the site could change to something like healthebay.org/healthyfuture (Heal the Bay does not have a site that has such a name … yet) that could be a centralized online center for people to take action (like send letters of support to newspapers and legislators or the like) on various issues dealing with marine debris.  Ideally, the center would reinforce the idea that it’s going to take all of us to solve the problem of plastic bags polluting our environment, working together: 1) through legislation that taxes the use of plastic and paper bags to discourage usage, 2) cleanup efforts, and 3) reclycling campaigns; and that if you take one element out (because of pressure from powerful moneyed interests), the efforts will most likely fail to solve much. 

I’m also trying to frame the situation very clearly with this ad with some long-term messaging:

• Plastic AND paper bags = bad for your health (because it impacts your quality of life).
• Reusable bags = healthy living, promising future, protecting your children from pollution.

Sure, the ad is not commercial-quality, but I think it gets the point across very effectively nevertheless.

  PS Don’t forget to click on the picture of the print ad above: it takes you to a video that CurrentTV aired about the problem of plastic bag pollution in our rivers and ocean.