At today’s weekly luncheon, members of the Redondo Beach Rotary Club heard about efforts by Heal-the-Bay to clean up Santa Monica Bay. The group has been in the forefront of successful efforts to protect the local environment since its founding in 1985 when residents banded together to bring an end to the dumping of raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay.
Today’s speaker, Jim La Vally, a volunteer spokesman with Heal-the-Bay, said the major problem in the Bay is “urban runoff and trash. Pollution has 
a big impact in our Bay.” He said that plastic is the biggest problem, noting further that 60% to 80% of the marine debris worldwide is plastic, and that 90% of the debris floating in the ocean is plastic.” He added, “70% of the oxygen we breath every day is produced by seaweed and phytoplankton.”
a big impact in our Bay.” He said that plastic is the biggest problem, noting further that 60% to 80% of the marine debris worldwide is plastic, and that 90% of the debris floating in the ocean is plastic.” He added, “70% of the oxygen we breath every day is produced by seaweed and phytoplankton.”Due to advocacy efforts by the organization, and other environmentalists in the region, “We no longer find plastic in the Bay beaches.” Heal-the-Bay is supporting a single-use plastics reduction ordinance that the City of Redondo Beach is currently considering. The City has also banned various balloons because when they burst and fall into the ocean they look like foods that fish would eat.
The organization sponsors what it calls Nothing But Sand beach cleanups along the Bay. The next one for Redondo Beach is scheduled for February 15th at 10:00 am to 12:00 noon at Torrance Beach.
“People in the L.A. region are very aware of this problem,” he said. Contact Heal the Bay at healthebay.org.
luncheon of James Jackman, the District 5280 Youth Exchange Officer, and gave her report to the club about her year abroad. Cicella spent her Junior year in high school in Slovakia, a landlocked country in Central Europe. There she spent a little over 10 months and lived with several Rotary families. While there she learned a cursory level of the language. The district initially made contact with her at a local organization called A Place Called Home and gave her a scholarship to help defray costs. She was one of about 8,000 students worldwide who participate in the Rotary Exchange program..jpeg)
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“You’re not too small a business for the government to care about you,” she opened her presentation. Then sequed into AB5 which takes effect January 1, 2020. The substance of AB5 is that “every worker for every 
company has to be an employee, not a contractor.” Unions pushed AB5 through the California legislature because they wanted part-time workers for Uber and Lyft to be full-time employees not contractors.
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