Let’s make this town plastic-free

 In Letters, Opinion

Editor:
The last straw (plastic and proverbial) for me was a video going around the internet of a sea turtle hopelessly tangled in some kind of plastic netting, the kind that holds everything from potatoes to firewood to onions and avocados.
A kind man was desperately trying to free the poor creature using a pen knife. Images like these are everywhere these days – islands of plastic waste, whales cut open to reveal bellies filled with grocery bags and disposable water bottles, seabirds strangled by pop-can holders and pull-up tops.
If you’re like me you want to do something. You console yourself with the fact that of course you recycle. All that plastic you can’t help bringing home because, after all, everything is wrapped in plastic now, you dutifully put in your blue box each week. Problem solved.
Except it isn’t. Only about 10 per cent of those plastics actually get recycled. The rest are incinerated or go to landfill or end up in the ocean. Surely a far better strategy is for all of us to use less plastic, particularly single-use plastics like water bottles, grocery bags, plastic cutlery, food containers, tampon applicators, coffee and drinking cups, straws, dental floss, the list is endless.
But using less plastic is not as easy as it sounds as a trip through any grocery store aisle will tell you. And it’s not realistic to think we are going to break our addiction overnight. Plastic is so much a part of our lives that we hardly notice we’re using it. Until we start paying attention. So aside from taking our refillable mugs with us to Tim Hortons what can we do? An article in the May 11 Globe and Mail offers lots of ideas for individuals.
But I believe that collectively we can do even more, that we can turn Creemore (and possibly Clearview) into a plastics-free community. Last year The Council of Canadians recognized the little town of Bayfield, Ontario, as North America’s first “plastics-free community.” If they can do it couldn’t we?
If you would like to get involved, e-mail cecily.ross@gmail.com. I know the dire news we’re hearing every day about the environment leaves many of us feeling hopeless and helpless. We can’t save the world but we can try to make a difference in our own back yard and set an example for others to do the same. All it takes is a village.
Cecily Ross,
Creemore.

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