Newport surfers seek Styrofoam ban

BALBOA PENINSULA —

It only took a couple of minutes one morning recently for Scott Morlan and his surf class to gather enough Styrofoam from the beach for a small pile.

The Newport Harbor High School educator, who also teaches math at the school, and his surf students routinely come across the polystyrene trash while doing beach cleanups, and it upset them enough to ask the Newport Beach City Council to do something about it.

“I feel it’s the No. 1 most found nasty piece of trash I find on the beach,” senior student Christian Winkler, 18, said. “Probably 90% of the trash I’ve picked up is … Styrofoam.”

Polystyrene, usually used by beachgoers to keep soda cool or coffee hot, is difficult to recycle and dispose of.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the class asked the city to ban polystyrene on the beach.

“One group went to businesses and asked people if they’d be willing to pay 5 cents extra in order to not use Styrofoam,” junior Alexander Gonzalez, 16, said. “About 70% said, ‘Yes.’ ”

Although the students surf before their regular classes, it’s not all about fun in the water. Along with picking up trash before their session, the students are charged with coming up with an environmental project, and polystyrene was their issue.

“I think it definitely opened our eyes,” Vivian Schneider, 15, said. “Any person who doesn’t know how dangerous and harmful it is should know.”

Newport Beach City Councilwoman Nancy Gardner said the council is listening. Last year smoking was banned from the beach, an effort that was started by one of Morlan’s classes about three years ago.

“The more we can encourage businesses to ban this, if we start this and five or six cities in California do it, the rest of the country can look at California as an example…. I think [a polystyrene ban] is not unreasonable if it’s represented right,” Gardner said in a telephone interview.

After a lecture from a member of the Earth Resources Foundation, a local environmental organization, and because of a subsequent beach cleanup at the Santa Ana River mouth, the kids decided to tackle polystyrene. What they saw during that cleanup really shook them.

“There were just little pieces everywhere…. It didn’t really hit us till we saw that,” Alexander said.

And the idea is not without precedent. The students argued that Santa Monica successfully banned polystyrene last year, and Malibu did the same in 2005. Laguna Beach is considering a similar ban.

Polystyrene “is made of oil and other harmful chemicals and it never biodegrades, it just breaks down into little pieces and the little pieces can be mistaken for food by animals,” Taylor Allee, 16, said.

Studies have shown that birds that eat polystyrene can end up starving since the material stays in their stomach without breaking down.

But it’s not just about soiling the beach. Because it continually splinters, it easily finds its way out of trash cans, onto the beach, roads and water, Stephanie Barger of the Earth Resources Foundation said.

“Styrofoam’s just too gnarly,” surf student Brandon Guzman said before running out into the water for a surf.