Readers React: Goodbye to plastic straws and bags. Next up for elimination: throwaway food containers and cutlery

To the editor: Single-use plastic bags and straws had to go — and throwaway food containers must follow next.

When we restaurant patrons want to take home leftovers, we should use our own reusable container, which can be bought for a few dollars, instead of the cheap polystyrene or cardboard boxes we are provided. This container can be brought along any time we go to any restaurant and can live in our car, just as our reusable grocery bags do.

Alongside those bags and food containers should be a cutlery kit that includes a plate, flatware, a mug and a cloth napkin. When we attend an event, we bring the cutlery kit — no more plastic flatware, throwaway napkins, polystyrene cups or paper plates. These kits can be available for purchase at every potluck or public event, for those who don’t own one yet.

We can expand the notion of reusable food containers to include every type of food that is marketed in cardboard, plastic or metal. We can buy and store our food in easily-washed glass containers in standard shapes and sizes. We can bring the jars back to the store to be returned to the manufacturer, washed and refilled, like bottles used to be.

This would create jobs and less waste. Making the switch would be challenging, yes, but we can do it.

Sheila Bernard, Camarillo

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To the editor: Thank you for helping to keep the plastic scourge in the public eye. Banning straws as a source of plastic waste is a step in the right direction, but as you write, it is only a small step.

Now, let’s add a return deposit on all containers and packages. Policymakers should seek to ban all throwaway packages and single-use containers. A comprehensive, meaningful recycling program would provide a good source of income to independent recyclers, and our oceans, parks and streets would be cleaner.

Glass jars and bottles that are almost always reused should return to store shelves in lieu of plastic. We can incentivize the retrieval of discarded plastic.

Robert Leyland, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I suggest the Los Angeles Times tells its readers how it plans to eliminate the many pounds of plastic that are used to protect delivered papers. Surely some portion of that plastic ends up in our oceans too.

Troy Nestor, Newbury Park

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