Craig Durand and Tim Popp attended the Environmental Bankers Association (EBA) Winter Conference this past January. Along with seminars, presentations and networking forums, the EBA also offers member an opportunity during the conference to give back to the environment.
This year’s event took place at Algalita’s Marine and Research and Education Center (Algalita). Algalita, founded in 1994, specializes in monitoring plastic pollution in the oceans. Volunteers helped support Algalita in pollution prevention with activities on the beach such as working sand stations, sieving sand, picking up plastic, and making notes of observations and data collection. Tim and Craig were joined by other EBA members including representatives from banks, consulting firms and law offices from around the nation.
Algalita’s Founder and Research Director, Captain Charles Moore, was the first to discover the “swirling soup of plastic debris” in the Pacific’s north eastern gyre, known by many as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. For nearly 20 years, Algalita has been searching for answers on plastic pollution in the marine ecosystem and is dedicated to the protection and improvement of the marine environment and its watersheds through research and education on the impacts of plastic pollution. For more information, go to Algalita’s website at www.algalita.org.
Past EBA volunteer give back projects have included support activities for Ozanam Inn serving homeless and needy in New Orleans, and facility work at a wildlife sanctuary in Santa Fe.