CEC Staff 7/9/14 CEC Staff 7/9/14

Drinking It In: Eliminating single-use plastic bottles

Rethink the Drink started in 2010 with a simple concept: provide schools with an alternative to single-use plastic water bottles and see if habit change followed. Four years later, we are proud to report that habit change is indeed possible. There are now 39 water refill stations in schools and community facilities across Santa Barbara County, and they have been used more than 870,000 times. Creating a single plastic water bottle emits 2.6 pounds of carbon dioxide, thus the amount of carbon dioxide emissions mitigated by our refill stations is more than 2 million pounds.

CEC Staff 2/24/14 CEC Staff 2/24/14

Climate Solutions for a Better World: Connecting the dots

On Thursday, February 13th, over 100 business leaders, nonprofit executives and 1% for the Planet members convened at Citrix in Goleta, Ca. for Connect the Dots, a conference that highlighted steps being taken by companies, NGOs and individuals to build resilient communities in an era of unprecedented climate change.

CEC Staff 12/11/13 CEC Staff 12/11/13

Thank You for Fueling the Clean Energy Movement

Thanks to our supporters we've been able to make some big strides in the clean energy movement on the Central Coast.

CEC Staff 12/4/13 CEC Staff 12/4/13

CEC's results in 2013

The Community Environmental Council (CEC) is a small and dedicated non-profit with a very big mission: ending the Santa Barbara region’s dependence on fossil fuels in one generation. It's been a busy year for CEC. After all, moving our region off fossil fuels is no small task.

Kathi King 6/19/13 Kathi King 6/19/13

Students Are Part of the Plastic-Reduction Solution

“I want to do something about all the plastic waste. I want to be an environmental scientist.” Those words of wisdom and hope came from a seventh-grade girl at La Cumbre Junior High earlier this month. The Community Environmental Council’s (CEC) Rethink the Drink staff visited the school and spoke to over 300 students about the importance of reducing our dependence on single-use plastic products.

Kathi King 11/30/12 Kathi King 11/30/12

Students Reduce Local Plastic Pollution by Reusing

With funding from local foundations, CEC's Rethink the Drink program has installed 16 refill stations on local elementary, junior high, high school and college campuses since the beginning of 2010. As of this month, schools have used the stations a total of 230,239 times and have dramatically reduced their use of disposable plastic water bottles.

CEC Staff 11/27/12 CEC Staff 11/27/12

Thank You for Building the Clean Energy Movement

CEC Staff 2/14/12 CEC Staff 2/14/12

CEC Joins "SB Reads" to Quack about Plastic

When Moby-Duck author, Donovan Hohn, heard about the mysterious loss of 28,800 bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers and read up on Arctic science and geography. Little did he know that he would be pulled into the mixed-up worlds of renegade beachcombers, Alaskan non-profit politics, Chinese toy manufacturers, and a massive environmental problem.