Ban foam in Maine
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation predicted in a report earlier this year that there will be more plastic than fish by weight in our oceans by the time I reach my 50th birthday. To know that this could be a reality in only 30 years time points to the urgency of this issue.
It is often easy for us to disregard environmental issues, when we do not understand the implications that these pose to our lives. Our plastics don’t biodegrade, but rather they break into smaller pieces called microplastics, which have been found everywhere, from alpine lakes and remote arctic islands, to our seafood and bottled water. Our society’s increased reliance on single-use plastics over the last 50 years has exacerbated the issue to such an extent that from 1964 to 2014, the world’s plastic production increased 20-fold.
With the election of Gov. Mills, it is my hope that her progressive approach will allow the state of Maine to look towards implementing measures like banning materials we use once and then pollute our environment for hundreds of years. With major corporations like McDonalds and Dunkin having already pledged to ban all single-use foam cups and containers, we should be considering and implementing a similar ban on polystyrene as a simple first step towards reducing our waste across the state.
Let’s protect our waterways, our own health and our wildlife by banning foam cups and takeout containers here in Maine.
Elina Woolever
Brunswick
Unfettered gun access bad for public safety
Lisa Ledwidge’s letter (“Proactive gun laws would save lives”, The Times Record, Jan. 15) points to this insane attitude we have towards guns despite the reality that women continue to be victims of domestic gun violence in Maine. She quotes gun rights advocate Jeff Timberlake’s (R-Turner) opinion that background checks and red flag laws were “solutions to problems we just don’t have here in Maine.” Well Jeff, the very next day I open The Times Record and am greeted by the the headline, “Police arrest boyfriend after woman’s death,” which goes on to say that 35-year-old Kary Dill was found shot to death and that 37-year-old Dwight Osgood was charged with her murder. How terribly sad. So please, can’t we agree that unfettered access to guns is not good for public safety, and that we ought to have reasonable laws to keep guns away from those who shouldn’t have them. Or, in spite of the increasing numbers of people killed by guns every year, we throw up our hands, and accept the killings of these women as, “not a problem.”
Carl Zeis,
Bath
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