California Ocean Litter Strategy Adopted

The California Ocean Protection Council adopted the 2018 California Ocean Litter Prevention Strategy at their April 24, 2018 meeting. The OPC updated its 2008 Implementation Strategy to Reduce and Prevent Ocean Litter (Strategy), in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program, and invited Surfrider Foundation as the only non-profit representative on the Steering Committee for this planning process.

The new strategy is intended to guide the next 6 years of ocean litter reduction and prevention along the California coast, involving key stakeholder groups like non-profit organizations, plastics industry, academia, local government, state goverment and federal government, waste management, and seafood/aquaculture companies. The strategy has a critical focus on land-based sources of ocean litter, which comprise the majority of trash in the ocean, and it addresses the cutting edge issue of microplastics, and how we can coordinate and organize our volunteer beach clean up data.  

More information is available here: http://www.opc.ca.gov/programs-summary/marine-pollution/ocean-litter-strategy-2018/