Dear Editor:
I have a question for the bottled water industry, our national grocery retailers and our fast food restaurant chains: why do they remain steadfast in their efforts to actively promote plastic pollution?
As we are all aware, we currently have unsustainable materials management practices and our recycling programs fall far short of 100% recovery. Plastics have become a significant problem to the environment. Due to slow degradation, we find plastic waste in their original form everywhere we look (during a walk in the woods or along our river bank), and more importantly it exists in the form of much smaller pieces – known as microplastics. These become truly problematic when they enter our water.
The Great Lakes represent 20% of the world’s freshwater reserves and provide drinking water to more than 30 million people in Canada and the U.S. It is estimated that roughly 10,000 tonnes of plastics enter the Great Lakes every year. The average concentration of plastic found in our Great Lakes is now higher than our oceans.
These plastics start as pellets used in manufacturing, and end up in everyday items like shopping bags, single use water bottles, and in drinking straws.
I can’t believe that our governments continue to allow our national grocery chains, fast food restaurants, and firms like Nestlé Waters to continue to look the other way, and not address this serious problem.
The Government of Canada estimates that only 11% of plastics are recycled in the country. Why not glass or aluminum cans – is what I would like to ask Nestlé Waters?
Why are groceries packed in a plastic bags is a question I’d like to ask Galen Weston Jr.? What happened to good old brown paper bags or even better – re-usable bags?
Even at the grocery stores you can’t buy your produce without it being all covered in plastic these days. People need to push back and change purchasing habits. I buy my produce “plastic free” at the farmer’s market, and I still get my water from the house tap.
I’d really like to see local store managers at companies like Zehrs, Walmart, Freshco, and all the fast food chains take a meaningful leadership position in seriously reducing plastics.
Why do our grocery stores continue to sell bottled water in throw away one-use plastic bottles? Can they not limit bottled water sales to large containers only?
Coke and Pepsi products at our grocery stores come in cans.
Raymond Mercuri,
Fergus