A 150 Mile House resident has launched a petition for Williams Lake City Council to ban single-use plastics in Williams Lake.
Erin Hitchcock says she is disgusted about what is happening to our planet.
“One of those things, of course, is plastic and then seeing that so many other municipalities are creating these bans, these bag bylaws,” she says.
“Victoria did it recently and now Kamloops is as well so I know that Williams Lake can definitely do it too.”
More than 100 people have signed the petition since Friday.
Hitchcock says she will be also launching a petition for the Cariboo Regional District.
“A lot of times people just think it’s plastic bags and that’s definitely the biggest one (that’s the one that Kamloops is doing), but there are other ones that we can be doing as well,” she says.
“Straws, coffee cups, styrofoam containers. There are so many different alternatives out there and you can even get glass and metal straws if you really need a straw, and I understand there are concerns from people about forgetting their reusable bags but it just takes one or two times that you forget before you start remembering, and then there are things that we can do as a community to make that easier.”
“A friend of mine told me about the bag libraries that they have in Dawson City so you have these boxes outside stores and different areas of the city to take a bag, leave a bag to help people transition.”
Noting that single-use plastics are polluting our oceans and killing both marine and land animals, Hitchcock says a single-use plastics ban in Williams Lake could also result in cost savings to the City.
“We are in a pretty critical period of time on this planet,” she says.
“I think it’s great that there are so many organizations and people who are doing their part, doing what they can where they can, but we got to keep the momentum going and the momentum has to really increase.”