Winter Lecture Series begins with free event

The Beacon Sloop Club Winter Lecture Series begins Thursday, Jan. 8, with a screening of the award-winning film Bag It with guest speaker Sharon Rowe, CEO and founder of Eco-Bags Products Inc.

The film explores people’s daily reliance on plastic, following “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he tries to make sense of our dependence on plastic bags. Although his quest starts out small, Berrier soon learns that the problem extends past landfills to oceans, rivers and ultimately human health.

The average American uses about 500 plastic bags each year, for about 12 minutes each. This single-use mentality has led to the formation of a floating island of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean more than twice the size of Texas. A single plastic bag can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.

Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down, and two of the most common plastic additives are endocrine disruptors, which have been shown to link to cancer, diabetes, autism, attention deficit disorder, obesity and infertility.

Rowe has been featured as an environmental pioneer in Time magazine, Glamour and Bag It and has won numerous awards, including the national 2012 Enterprising Woman Award, issued by Enterprising Women magazine.

This free event will be held at 7 p.m. Jan. 8 at the Beacon Sloop Club, 2 Flynn Drive in Beacon (adjacent to the harbor). In the event of inclement weather check the website at beaconsloopclub.org. For further information, call 845-463-4660 or 914-879-1082.

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