The Coalition will join with Greater Goods and California Solar Electric to launch the first of a monthly gathering series called “Little Footprints.” Beginning at 1pm on Sunday, October 29, the focus will be on ways in which we as a community can more gently impact our environment. Hosting the event will be Greater Goods, the collaborative non-profit space located at 145 W. El Roblar in Meiners Oaks.
Greater Goods founder Vaughn Montgomery plans a smorgasbord of attractions, including the showing of a documentary from surfer and musician Jack Johnson called “The Smog of the Sea”, about the microbead plastics polluting our oceans. The film will be followed by a discussion with scientist Marcus Eriksen & activist Anna Cummins, the husband/wife duo who founded 5 Gyres, one of the most impactful organizations in the world in the effort to clean up our oceans &, simultanesously, ourselves. Montgomery also plans a collaborative “group craft” artwork using plastics gathered at a beach & river clean-up over the weekend. A workshop on how to make some of your own household items will be offered, too.
“We’ll bring bags of trash to Greater Goods on Sunday and string together a big fish to hang in the window for the month,” Montgomery said. “This month we’re going to focus on working to get rid of single-use products. We want to partner with different organizations to give people a sense of what they’re doing in the community.”
Montgomery opened Greater Goods in March of this year with his sister Laurie Cornell. They’ve hosted talks, documentary showings, workshops, music shows, poetry readings, and a wide array of other offerings.
“We’re trying to keep a dynamic sense of programming, as well as a little more of a retail presence, helping artists sell their work,” Montgomery said. “We want it to be interactive and multi-use, like a cafe with poetry and theater and music. We think our culture is pretty fractured and we need a ritual place for gathering where people can talk about what is under-acknowledged, alternative, or even taboo in our world today.“
Montgomery said he knows that eliminating plastics from the ocean could take thousands of years, but — inspired in part by Jack Johnson’s efforts — he’s determined to do what he can to make a start, in collaboration with other groups in Ojai.
“I thought to start, let’s have a potluck, and let’s make it plastic-free, with as much local and organic food as possible,” he said. “Maybe we can launch a tradition of plastics-free potlucks and that will just ripple out into the community and start something here in Ojai.”
Little Footprints will continue to be held on the last Sunday of each month at Greater Goods, featuring a variety of new environmental ideas and proposals, presented by local groups and leaders.
You can RSVP or share the event on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/148513765883853/