On April 19th, 2022 we skipped school (for a good cause) and made our way to the Marin Civic Center. We had been preparing our speeches for this meeting for a very long time, but we were still nervous. The meeting that we were going to was a meeting about passing an ordinance that would ban all single use plastic to-go ware in Marin County.
In 2019, we met with Supervisor Rodoni to talk about banning plastic straws in Marin, and that meeting inspired him to make this ordinance! We got to the meeting and we told the Board Of Supervisors why they should consider this ordinance, along with maybe fifteen other people! It was wonderful how many others came to show their support! We told them about how much single use plastics harm our county - the humans, the animals, ecosystems, and more - and also mentioned how long we had been rooting for this ordinance and working against single use plastics.
In the end, the Supervisors decided that this ordinance was important for our county, and decided to consider it! We were so happy that the Supervisors were letting it pass. Only one more step to go.
On May 10th, 2022 we again visited the Supervisors at the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael. Having previously gone to a county meeting, and knowing that the Supervisors had put this ordinance into high consideration, we wrote a small speech of thank yous and reminded them of the difference between bioplastics and regular plastics.
There were not many speakers in person besides ourselves, because people could guess that it was being passed, but there were several people on Zoom. After a very long wait from the people on Zoom, finally the Supervisors could vote on whether they believed our county should still go through with this ordinance. Everyone voted positively and on May 10th, 2022, the Reusable Plastics ordinance passed! Now we start the 18-month wait until it goes into effect.
- Reese & Viola
