Dear Editor,
Bertrand Russell said, “One must care about a world one will not see.”
The World Economic Forum predicted in 2016 that the world’s oceans would contain more plastics than fish by 2050.
The use of plastic shopping bags around the world amounts to a trillion bags per year and Canada is responsible for 3 billion of those bags which is the same as each Canadian using 200 bags per year. Most shopping bags are used for 20 minutes and do not break down for 400 years. Marine life feeds on broken down plastics that persist as microplastic because it looks like food. They starve slowly and painfully, cannot reproduce because they are so sick and undernourished.
In response to the growing and ever increasing plastic pollution problem, the Terrace Council of Canadians would like to recognize Canadian municipalities whose councils have voted to “ban the bag”.
Victoria, Montreal, and smaller municipalities have also “banned the bag” across our country like Fort McMurray, Thompson, Man., Leaf Rapids, Man., Huntingdon, Que.
Vancouver is proposing fees for single-use plastic but should do more. And Nelson’s council is discussing the ban.
Even though Do Your Part Recycling will take our single-use plastic shopping bags, wouldn’t it be healthier for our planet’s future to carry cloth bags for shopping? Why not make a personal commitment to rethink “400 years” for each single-use plastic shopping bag you see and refuse it?
Let’s all rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse or recycle all the plastics in our lives.
Aldous Huxley said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored”. Ignoring the health of our oceans and marine life means extinction for us. We must all think about the future with every purchase we make.
Mary Ann Shannon
Terrace Chapter of the Council of Canadians