This week marks a huge victory for the future of our oceans! Surfrider and its partners are celebrating the announcement of President Biden’s plan to halt all leasing for offshore drilling for oil and gas in US public lands and oceans. In President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad offshore drilling was put on a temporary hold essentially killing the 2017 federal proposal by the Department of the Interior to open 90% of US coasts to offshore drilling. This is an incredible success for US coastal zones and we are one step closer to permanently ending the dirty and dangerous practice of offshore drilling.
The Surfrider Foundation generated a successful victory, the seventh of 2021, by educating millions of people about the threat, organizing thousands of businesses through our Sign the Surfboard project, and passing hundreds of community resolutions on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. There is still a lot of work to be done to ensure the health of our ocean ecosystems, however we can celebrate this incredible progress! Thank you to everyone who participated and helped this campaign become successful.
You can read more about the victory here
EPR, or Extended Producer Responsibility, is a term that we will be hearing a lot more about in the coming legislative session. Check out Surfrider’s blog about the importance of EPR and how it could impact the future of plastic production.
The Hold Onto Your Butts PSA was produced by the Surfrider San Francisco Chapter. The PSA won a Platinum Award for Video Production from the AVA Digital Awards. In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, 3 billion butts are littered annually. You can change that!