Editor:
With the unsettled state of society and the environment, my delightful and opinionated mother Barbara, dead for the past 15 years, has not been having a very restful time of it, having had many occasions to roll over in her grave.
On a pedestrian level, among many of the “new and improved” things that she decried was the switch food providers made in the 1970s and 80s from glass, paper and wooden containers to plastic and the introduction of synthetics by garment manufacturers. Purchases of clothes were always of natural fibres, produce unpackaged, garden tools wooden, bamboo or metal until her death. When grocery shopping, our mother was extremely brand loyal and suffered real and lasting disappointment as one by one her brands made the change and she had no option but to buy cooking oil, mayonnaise, etc, really everything but milk and Heinz Ketchup, which can still be purchased in glass bottles, in plastic. Recent reports indicate plastics have found their way into almost every level of our food chain and water supply, and have created untenable mounds of non-biodegradable garbage on land and in our oceans. Barbara would be gratified to learn that on March 2, 175 nations attending the UN Environment Assembly set an agenda that will see them adopting an international, legally binding agreement to cease the production and wide use of plastics by 2024. The geo-political scene could hardly be worse, but there appears reason to rejoice on the matter of plastic pollution. I would encourage all of us “consumers” to avoid buying plastic objects when possible and more importantly to engage with the manufacturers of our favourite brands to demand a reversion to natural material containers. Banning plastic cutlery, straws and grocery bags is not going far enough. Given sufficient feedback and encouragement from purchasers, manufacturers and distributors may move more quickly to divest themselves of plastic containers.
Jane Hopkins, Roberts Creek
