Consumer awareness about the environmental problems caused by single-use plastic bags, straws, flatware, and cups has grown substantially over recent decades.

The dangers of plastics are well-documented and well-known as threats to our world.

More and more people remember to bring reusable bags and containers to the grocery store, refuse plastic straws in their drinks and bring reusable mugs to the coffee shop.

However, there is one little known source of discarded plastic pollution that has been filling up our local waterways and impacting our oceans – spent shotgun wads, the plastic piece inside a shotgun shell that separates the shot from the powder.

Surfrider Foundation is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s ocean, waves and beaches, for all people, through a powerful activist network. They are trying to tackle this issue by changing behaviors related to shotgun wads.

After collecting thousands of plastic shotgun wads along San Francisco’s Aquatic Park and Ocean, China and Baker beaches, the SF chapter noticed, thanks to social media, that other seaside communities were doing similar collecting around the world.

Learn from Anna Kauffman how this inspired a new program and thus the “Shotgun Wad Watcher” was conceived and a global initiative went live. She will discuss how Surfrider Foundation members and volunteers around the world continue to collect data and work to spread the message on how to keep our waves and beaches free of plastic pollution.

Anna is a longtime Surfrider member, a core volunteer, and is part of the San Francisco chapter’s executive committee. She is an environmental advocate for Eco-pliant, Inc., a local distributor providing sustainably sourced solutions, including paper straws, throughout the United States. After picking up over 3,000 plastic shotgun wads from nearly every beach she’s been to in the past few years, Anna is spearheading this global initiative to track wads in the wild.

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