Make a Lasting Impact and Go Plastic Free

Plastic. It’s ubiquitous, and yet somehow invisible. Whose problem is it anyway? Yours? Mine? Theirs?

Plastic stresses me out, and yet I’m grateful for it; it has helped save one of my children’s lives and makes my life easier and safer in countless ways. It’s nearly impossible to avoid and literally never goes away; plastic can break down into tiny pieces — the dreaded microplastics — but it never biodegrades. Thus, it’s everywhere, even in our bodies.

The size of the plastic problem became apparent to me 15 years ago while visiting Bali. I remember being disgusted by the amount of plastic strewn across the island’s southern beaches; it tangled around your legs in the water. It was disturbing. Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much to find plastic bottles and caps in the sand and washing up onshore at Miramar beach when the Miramar Hotel first opened. It felt like Bali in Santa Barbara. The source of the problem was single use plastic bottles offered to all hotel guests on the beach and across the hotel property. A new source of plastic was flooding my hometown beach. Fortunately, when asked for change, the Miramar team swiftly transitioned the entire property away from plastic bottles; guests are now offered aluminum bottles of water. Is it a perfect fix? No. But at least aluminum is highly recyclable (and easier to spot in sand). Plastic, as we know, never goes away.