Citizens are responsible with plastic bags

Re: “City looks to bag some feedback,” Oct. 17. The problem of plastic pollution is real. On a recent visit to Southeast Asia, the plastic garbage was everywhere. Bottles, bags, containers, plastic of all sorts littered ditches, canals, streams and rivers. Some deserted beaches were covered in plastic refuse. Alarm, shock and depression are feelings that arose.

Switch to Victoria. Where is all the plastic? I regularly walk the beach between Esquimalt Lagoon and Albert Head. I don’t see plastic littering our beaches or wrapped within the flotsam at the high-water mark. The fences surrounding our schools are not lined with discarded plastic bags after a wind storm.

Where is this abandoned/polluting plastic? It’s in our bottle-deposit program. The bags line our garbage bins at home when we are not forced to buy alternatives, or are in our recycling bins at home or at the stores.

The majority of our citizens are environmentally responsible, are not litter bugs and don’t need to be babysat or coerced into doing the right thing.

We also don’t need our local politicians enacting superficial bylaws suggesting they are making a global difference in the face of their local shortcomings. What’s next, a bylaw telling us to finish our supper because someone somewhere is starving? Frank Buruma Colwood