MISSION

The Zero Waste Committee will be advocating for high impact policies that reduce waste, in partnership with the Plastic Pollution and other committees. We hope to inspire and educate younger generations to reduce and reuse and will be looking at educational initiatives towards that goal. Please join us and email laclimatereality@gmail.com for more information.

LEADERSHIP

Tara Barauskas

Tara has loved nature since she began scouting as a child. She currently runs Community Corporation of Santa Monica, a nonprofit organization that builds affordable housing on the westside. During her career in affordable housing, she has become a leader in the sustainability arena by creating some of the greenest affordable housing buildings in Southern California. Tara was trained as a Climate Reality leader in 2018 in Los Angeles and has been interested in getting involved ever since. As a mother of two teenage boys, she's been actively involved with both her kids' schools to educate kids about climate change and created Green Teams at their elementary and middle schools to engage kids on this topic. Activities have included beach cleanups, zero waste lunch contests, camping trips, and field trips. She presented at the recent 24 hours of reality and was thrilled to see kids really engaged about her climate change presentation. Tara is passionate about consumption reduction (plastic in particular) and would be pleased to bring her leadership skills and passion to this subcommittee.

Karla Reinhard

Karla’s interest in the climate crisis began when she was in high school in 2004 and recognized the tremendous amount of waste that was being created in the school, not to mention the food waste that can be put to better use. Karla started to change her own behavior by recycling and using reusables. She then attended Cal State Northridge, and majored in psychology, and then went on to get a master's degree in psychology, with an emphasis on behavior analysis. Behavior analysis is the study of behavior in humans and organisms. As she continued her education and learned more about human behavior, her interests expanded to learning to change human behavior to help change the path of the climate crisis. In grad school, Karla completed her thesis on increasing recycling behavior in elementary schools. She is currently a Ph.D candidate working on a dissertation in the area of sustainability and human behavior. Karla currently works at an agency that implements applied behavior analysis to children with developmental disabilities, such as autism.