For the past three months, Team Marine, along with Mr. Kay’s Marine Biology class, has been collecting thousands of redeemable beverage containers at Santa Monica High School. This past Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Team Marine organized a sorting event of over 8,000 containers. In all there were: 6,087 plastic #1 bottles, 193 plastic #2 bottles, 1,378 aluminum bottles, and 493 glass containers. Through this event, we have raised about $455. This equates to over 74 LifeStraws! Thanks to the City of Santa Monica and especially Rafael and Adam Holt from the Allan Company for picking up these recyclables.
On the 9th day of October, Santa Monica encountered the first flush of the year. This was surprising because the amount of rain indicated a gurgle rather than a flush. When we realized that it was the First Flush we sent a crew down to the beach to do an emergency clean up. When we arrived at the Pico-Kenter storm drain, we were disturbed by the debris of human pollutants. Coffee cups, plastic bottles, and tennis balls were only some of the objects in a stream of potentially toxic foam and slime that led straight for the ocean. We also noticed that the morning after there was a new trash collecting vehicle that was roaming the surface of the sand. This was really cool despite the fact that it was necessary. We are expecting to have a second flush that will carry the rest of the debris (considering the amount of rain was too little) to completely flush the storm drains of sand. Team Marine is currently on standby until the second flush occurs.
We would also like to acknowledge Matthew King and Meredith McCarthy from Heal the Bay for notifying us of this year’s flush.
We have been honored with a commendation from Terry O’Day (Mayor Pro Temp) on behalf of the City of Santa Monica for our dedication to Volts Wattson which debuted last month . This recognition commends us for the hurdles that we had to overcome and how we used this electric vehicle to raise awareness about climate change and ocean acidification. We were ecstatic to have received this great recognition from the City of Santa Monica because it shows that real scientific research and hard work pays off and our message is being heard! We shall continue advocating about our car conversion and look forward to more projects that are to come.
After unveiling our gas-to-electric car conversion project at Alt-Car Expo we were invited to go on CNN Latino on a news show called “Sin Limites con Elizabeth Espinosa”‘. We were able to get the word out about our car at a Television network that gets millions of views daily and that positive media outreach surely helped us expand our audience level to a more well-rounded one.On that 2nd day of October, team marine members: Patricio Guerrero, Kimberly Fuentes, and Jazmin Carvajal went and spoke about our car in the hopes of reaching out to the Latin community. Our goal at this event was to explain the benefits of driving electric (monetary, health wise, and environmental) and showing the audience that this is something that the youth is extremely passionate about. It was very exciting to see our members on television thanks to Alberto Henriquez (Producer/ Booker), Claudia Bautista (Spanish teacher at Santa Monica High School), and Elizabeth Espinosa . We are all so grateful to have been granted this amazing opportunity and it will hopefully be one of many more to come! Check out the interview below!
Last saturday, October 5th, We displayed “Volts Wattson” at the 6th Annual Classic Car show in Santa Fe Springs. Although we rode up in our silent vehicles with no rev, we wound up being a huge hit! We really stood out and were able to educate many classic car enthusiasts about the effect of combustion engines on our environment. The people at the event were really happy to see that we were conserving the uniqueness of our classic 1971 Volkswagen Super-Beetle by converting it to an EV. Electric cars are our future and we were able to convey this by combining this classic car with today’s sustainable technology. We were also able to encourage high school students from Santa Fe Springs who are in the process of converting their own car. Thank you Kevin Jamero the principal of Santa Fe Springs High School as well as Sam Smith and Bill for granting us the opportunity of participating in this wonderful show.
