We started with plastic straws, but now we're going to the wider range of plastic utensils and other single-use plastics. They also harm our oceans and hurt marine life, and we don't want that to happen.
In September 2018, the Point Reyes Light wrote about businesses in West Marin being ahead of the California plastic straw ban. When we read the article we were concerned about people wanting to use compostable straws and other single-use items.
Our letter dated October 11, 2018 to the Point Reyes Light after September 2018 article re: West Marin ahead of straw ban with our concern about using plant-based compostables.
“Here in West Marin, we don’t have fast-food restaurants, but we do have a big problem. A lot of restaurants and other places use corn-based or some other plant-based plastics that look like plastic but are called “compostable,” but we can’t compost them here…the plant-based compostable plastic needs to be heated up super-hot, and there are no facilities that do that in Marin. So they can’t go in the green compost bins that we get from the waste company.”
We are asking people to try to use bamboo, paper, or metal straws instead of plastic or compostable. The compostable straws, they can't be composted in Marin because we don't have the facilities to get them hot enough to biodegrade, so they have to go in the trash. That means they can still get into the ocean and harm animals.
We did pretty well with the plastic straws, but we want to go even farther and try to get rid of single-use plastics throughout Marin!
We hope you can join us on our journey to stop using plastic only one time!
Sincerely,
Viola and Reese
April 27. 2019 Viola Seda and Reese Patton
