Let’s reduce the flow of plastic into environment

While I think that reader Claudia Jackson’s recent letter may have overlooked cultural and/or safety considerations when pouring beverages into plastic cups (something that I would like to hear about from the owner of the theater she visited), I think that her attitude was, otherwise, appropriate. We have plastic pushed at us from all directions. and it is accumulating everywhere on the planet.

I am given plastic bags at stores even after saying that I do not want one. We return to the waiter the beverage straws that we did not ask for. During the pandemic, we accumulated a large inventory of plastic tableware that has remained around our house unused since it arrived with takeaway food. Perhaps restaurants assumed that we were going on a Friday night picnic.

When I go to a situation that I expect to require plastic tableware, I bring my own and offer the explanation that, if it is going to be a fork for 600 years, I may as well be using it. I have recently started bringing my own leftover container when dining out to keep an un-recyclable restaurant-provided container out of a landfill.

I am about to travel to the United Kingdom for the first time since before the pandemic, and I hope to find that one thing that I have experienced there has not changed: Store clerks who ask if I want a bag before putting my purchase into one. Often, there is no need. If we could be a little less convenience-addicted and a bit more organized, we could reduce the unnecessary flow of plastic into our environment.

Curt Fredrikson, Mokena