LETTER: I detest litter!

To the editor:

Garbage by the side of the road, in the ditches, on the trails, and in parking lots is distracting from the beauty of nature. The most troubling garbage that I pick up is the flimsy plastic bag that gets ripped to shreds by the wind and ends up entangled in the bushes and branches of the forest.

When it is finally secured you must ensure that the wind doesn’t snatch it out of your hands again. About one year ago the city of Palmer hosted a recycling symposium - and part of the gathering included a group of people working to eliminate the plastic bags from our communities. I was excited to hear about how we could work to remove the plastic bags from our communities just like many other cities, states, and whole countries had done. I wanted to eliminate the eyesore of the plastic bag. Since that time I have learned that the plastic bag is not only an eyesore, it is a danger to our environment. I heard from fellow B&B owner’s Harvey and Sandy Bowers at Agate Inn that two of their pet reindeer had died from eating plastic bags.

They routinely pick up all trash that blows into their property, but something slipped by them and the reindeer ate the plastic bags and died.Plastic bags are with us forever, as they never biodegrade. The flyaway bags get eaten by our local reindeer, caribou and moose, and they die when the plastic blocks their digestive tract. The plastic just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics.

These microplastics get washed away and end up in the ocean where sea creatures including our beloved wild salmon eat it, and the plastic comes back to us on our dinner plates. I make my living from a small business in tourism. Out of state visitors to the Mat Su spent $98 million in 2016 and employed 1,350 people in the Borough.

Restaurants, lodgings, and stores all see a big increase in their businesses because of the visitors that come to see our beautiful State. We have a responsibility to keep our land as presented in the advertisements - clean and pristine, free of plastic bag debris.Let’s remove the visual eyesore that plastic bags create, and the danger that they are to our environment, and support the city of Wasilla’s Ordinance 17-24.

— Liz Jackson

Palmer