Goal isn’t to ban plastic but to use much less of it

A recent letter lauded the use of plastic in health care. Plastics are also used in many other important ways, I would certainly agree.

Whether or not plastics are irreplaceable in anything is certainly a subject for debate. Where plastics are not useful, and in fact are killing us, is in their use in one-time-use packaging of just about everything imaginable. Even more insidious and pervasive is its use in packaging our food and beverages and thereafter thrown away, with expected recycling seldom occurring, mostly ending up in non-recyclable garbage dump piles and thereafter burned or otherwise disposed of in ways that generate methane gas, one of the larger contributors to global warming — and to the distribution of microbial plastic particles that are being found everywhere on the planet — even in the air we breathe.

Perhaps all new technologies have a two-edged sword. But one of the edges of the plastic sword needs to be honed-down to a nub; and that’s the use of plastic for one-time use purposes, particularly for packaging of our food and beverages.

The next time you go into a grocery store, check out the shelves and try to find products that are not packaged in plastic; I’d bet you will find less than 10 percent of products using something other than plastic for containers or wrapping. This practice may be cheaper for us and our pocketbooks; but at what cost?

Remember: Plastic is basically a fossil fuel product.

During the next state legislative session in 2025, please ask your legislators to consider supporting and passing the ReWRAP act, where manufacturers will be responsible for paying for the full lifecycle of their product, including disposal and recycling. On your part, try buying as much of your food and beverage products that are being sold in “other than” plastic containers; it may cost a little more but .what is the cost of not doing so?

Jim Bloss

Citizens Climate Lobby. Snohomish Chapter

Monroe