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Over 1 million plastic bags float into San Francisco Bay every year. Plastic bags pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle and kill animals. They also float out into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to join the huge island of plastic trash bobbing the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Although no one wants this kind of devastation, it seems the Plastics industry has convinced us that this is just how things go.

Oakland-based Save the Bay has launched a campaign in the Bay Area to reduce plastic bag litter from the 3.8 billion bags that Bay Area residents use each year. First, they’re asking us to be simply aware of the problem. Then, they’re asking us to each do something very simple: get reusable bags.

Now, if you’d like to do more, here’s what else:

1. Sign this petition to the Mayor to support a fee on single-use bags. Our neighbors in San Francisco already do!
2. Send an email to the Mayor. You can use this form, and type in your name. It’s that easy.
3. Come out to MLK Shoreline on Saturday, January 9th to help with a clean-up and planting native plants.

Students, Faculty and Staff added their faces to show Laney's support for the 350ppm CO2 goal.

On Wednesday, October 21, 65 people at Laney held one of 5200 events in 181 countries for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. Students, faculty and staff from Peralta celebrated 350 Day, an international day of grassroots action to show international decision-makers that people in every locale in the planet agree with lowering the human impact on Climate Change.

Oakland Green Jobs Corp students celebrate their graduation by raising their commemorative green hard hats. (photo courtesy Ella Baker Center)

200 hundred people, including Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and Peralta Colleges Chancellor Elihu Harris, packed into Laney College’s Theatre at 4pm this afternoon to celebrate the graduation of the 1st class of the Oakland Green Jobs Corp, the first program of its kind in the world.

“You folks, all 35 of you, are the astronauts of the Green Jobs movement,” said Mayor Dellums to the graduates sitting next to him. “You have gone where no one else has gone, but where thousands of people will go. You folks on the cutting edge you are part of an elegant idea, fight poverty and fight pollution simultaneously.”

Laney College’s Career Technical Education programs provide classes in home energy efficiency, solar photovoltaic panel installation, electrical, carpentry, insulation, heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

The students received life- and job-skills training at the Cypress Mandela Training Center, based in West Oakland. Cypress Mandela also selected the first group of trainees from its on-going programs.

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Growth Sector is working with regional green businesses to place graduates into full-time jobs.