Whales eating sweatpants and duct tape: a wake-up call

The story “Garbage in stomach of dead whale” [NWTuesday, April 20] should be a wake-up call for people.

Sadly, this is about the thousandth wake-up call that we need to stop throwing our junk into anywhere except the trash can. Imagine how much better it would be if you went to a beach and it was not covered in beer bottles and plastic bags. It would be so much better if we were able to keep our city and eventually our whole country clean.

Sorrowfully, we are far from this goal. In fact, we are so far away from it that whales are eating sweatpants and duct tape. If we could manage to clean up our city’s streets and beaches, it would not only be a better prettier place to live, but it would save the lives of the many animal species that live around Seattle.

— Cole Thomas, Seattle

Time to revive plastic bag fee

The American Chemistry Council, Exxon and other plastic manufacturers are the ones who spent $1.5 million dollars last summer defeating the measure on the Seattle ballot to charge a fee for plastic bags at the grocery store.

Facing more such bans, the plastic industry is now launching a program encouraging us to recycle our plastic bags. While recycling is a good thing, it does not solve the problem.

We use more than 350 million plastic bags a year in Seattle alone. Around the country, charging a fee has been proven to reduce the use of plastic bags by 85 percent or more almost overnight. It is those same plastic bags that end up on our streets, in our waterways and in whales’ stomachs, despite recycling efforts.

It makes me angry that we think our plastic bags are more important than the health of the ocean and marine life. I urge the City Council and city governments everywhere in Washington to follow the lead of Edmonds and take this issue up again.

— Sally Wolf, Seattle