Dear Editor:
Canada is being sued by the biggest oil producers in the country, Nova Chemicals, Dow Chemicals and Imperial Oil, to prevent regulations that would reduce our plastic pollution.
They insist that plastic is necessary while blaming us and municipal waste systems for the harm their products cause! Since we pay taxes, those companies are suing us. Money that could be used for roads, building projects, public programs will be used to pay the very people who are destroying our waters, land and air. Yes, we are paying them to do it!
Half of all plastic produced is for single use. It is shocking that big oil can lie about this issue without an iota of conscience.
We seldom stop to think about single-use plastics, but it takes so much energy to extract the oil from the ground, move it to a refinery overseas, move it back to the plastic production plant, produce our take-out containers, food wrap, containers and wrap at the grocery store, etc., then ship them to companies that make those containers and shipped to us. They are filled or used once, only to become garbage after a few moments or days of use. I don’t know about you, but trying to reuse those containers becomes a problem of storage, first, then guilt for not using them fast enough and finally, after accumulating stacks of them, having to throw them in the recycling bins, which is not the solution!
Big companies like Nestle have encouraged recycling to keep us from seeing that they are the producers of plastic bottles, and their responsibility ends there. We foot the bill to recycle them. Plastics fill up recycling depots and create mountains of pollution, mostly without being used again. It is time to stand up to big oil! We shouldn’t foot the bill for their greed.
Gerry Walsh,
Erin