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For the fall quarter, our lead campaign has focused on protecting our oceans from toxic plastic pollution. For over 30 years now, we have been aware of giant gyres of swirling trash that clog up the ocean, such as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” right off our coast. The majority of this trash heap is coming from land-based sources of junk, like single-use plastic grocery bags. Californians use 12 billion plastic bags every single year, and less than 5% of those bags are ever recycled. CALPIRG students have committed to passing bills to ban bags across the state, and have made some awesome progress. In Santa Barbara, the UCSB chapter has been building tremendous support on campus in order to tackle the problem city-wide. So far, we have gathered close to 3,000 petitions to ban plastic bags in Santa Barbara. We have also been working to build a coalition of student and environmental groups, as well as faculty, admin and businesses in order to generate the support it will take to pass a ban in our city. Throughout the quarter, we have been working hard to educate thousands of students on campus through our visibility battles. We made ninja turtle outfits to get the point across that sea turtles perceive plastic in the ocean as food, and millions of them are dying from ingesting the toxic soup. The ninja turtles have been battling an epic plastic bag monster, made up of over 500 plastic bags to demonstrate just how many the average Californian uses each year. To cap off our quarter, we held a beach clean up with many CALPIRG interns and volunteers. The clean up was a success, and we collected lots of trash, especially plastic! We invited our coalition partners and took the opportunity to remember why we work to hard to protect the places that we love.