Closing the Loop: Advancing EPR through California's SB1180

This blog post was written by Kaylynn Malicdem, a 2026 Marine Plastics Ambassador. 

Our policy campaign focused on promoting California’s Senate Bill 1180 that established the regulation for single-use plastic and food service material. This act would require producers of these plastic materials to be held accountable by creating these materials with sustainable materials rather than single-use plastic. What inspired this campaign has been seeing the influx of plastic waste in our environments and communities. Our project directly aligns with the goals of the Marine Plastics Ambassadors Program as we are promoting this bill to get more awareness and support to mitigate the amount of plastic waste in our communities and environments. 

Kaylynn worked with fellow Ambassador, Erika Mascota, to launch the Closing the Loop campaign utilizing social media to educate youth about Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and California Senate Bill 1180.

‍Social Media as a Tool for Advocacy

The Instagram post introducing our educational video series to explain EPR.

Our campaign has been primarily promoted on our Instagram page (@ctlcampaign), where we educated the public on what SB1180 is, what extended producer responsibility (EPR) is and how it ties into SB1180. Social media gave us a format where we provided education on these topics for our viewers and supporters to raise awareness of policy solutions to further support it in the future. 

One of our Instagram posts on @ctlcampaign page that expresses the launch of our educational video series to understand what EPR is.

Some outreach impact statistics our campaign had reached through our Instagram account had an estimate of: 

  • Number of people reached:
    • 112 followers 
    • 202 interactions
  • Social media reach or engagement:
    • 2,527 Views overall (36.9% of viewers had been followers and 63.1% of viewers had been non followers)
    • 152 likes on posts 

These outcomes have been meaningful as they have promoted this bill to community members within California communities by bringing awareness and attention to this policy solution in the first place. As we had not seen much promotion of this bill previously, it directly targeted the goal to mitigate plastic pollution in our environments. By promoting this type of policy solution, we educated individuals to further support EPR and will keep our community update on the progression of the bill in the future. 

Lessons Learned

My experience as a Marine Plastics had been so informative and educational. I was grateful that I had the opportunity to learn more about environmental policy and how to break into that field as I never expected myself to pursue a pathway in that way. Some challenges I encountered at times had been communicating with partners on this campaign, yet we had prevailed and accomplished what we had during our collaboration and time together! Leadership and communication skills had definitely been skillsets I was able to further strengthen from this program as my collaborative efforts with my partner relied on these skills to develop ideas for our posts and our campaign goals overall. 

It had been a wonderful experience meeting my campaign partner, Erika Mascota, as well as other Ambassadors in a space where we are all so passionate towards the same goal and outcome for our world. It has been so inspiring and motivating working with other young people that I have created a community with and to further support one another in our goals and endeavors!!

Looking Ahead

Looking forward, I hope that I plan to continue this policy campaign by providing updates on SB1180 to update our community of followers on the bill and how you can further support it in the future. I believe that this type is so important and really hope that it becomes implemented within our state as it can create a heavy impact for our communities and environment, therefore by further providing updates on the progression of this bill are efforts I plan to proceed with! 

Currently, I am a part of the EarthEcho Water Challenge Ambassadors program which focuses on the topic of Water Conservation. With these efforts as an ambassador I plan to intersect the importance of water conservation with mitigating plastic pollution as they connect heavily with one another. By mitigating plastic pollution we are conserving our water resources. I will continue to advocate for these efforts and you can follow along to see our initiative at @ctlcampaign on Instagram, as well as @konservationkay where I personally post educational content on environmental conservation & stewardship! 

Learn more about the EarthEcho Marine Plastics Ambassadors at https://www.earthecho.org/plastics-ambassadors.