Re: "Taxing single-use plastics may work better than bans," July 16.
Before any government-mandated constraints to gratuitous plastic use and waste can notably succeed, we'll likely need a large-scale shift away from the prevailing human convenient-disposal general mindset.
More so, how do we collectively manage such a major shift when - regardless of scuba divers' reports of immense tangled plastic messes (not to mention plastic bags found at some of the ocean's deepest points) - so much of it is not immediately observable, i.e. out of sight, out of mind?
It doesn't surprise me, as general human mentality collectively allows us to, amongst other forms of blatant pollution, throw non-biodegradables down a dark chute like we're safely dispensing it into a black-hole singularity to disappear into nothing.
And then there's the astonishing short-sighted selfishness.
I observed this last year when a TV news reporter randomly asked a young urbanite wearing sunglasses what he thought of government restrictions on disposable plastic straws.
"It's like we're living in a nanny state, always telling me what I can't do," he recklessly retorted.
No wonder so much gratuitous yet sea-life-damaging plastic waste eventually finds its way into our life-filled oceans, where there are few, if any, caring souls to see it.
Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, B.C.
