Once again, Kitsap County residents are stuck with the bill for a shortsighted waste stream design.

Washington State Utilities Commission approved (privatized) Waste Management’s rate increases for curbside recycle pickup. People of lower income are especially hard hit because they have even fewer choices in this ridiculous system.

We only need to look upstream to see how much, for example, Coca-Cola (the largest labeled plastic polluter) spends on lobbying and advertizing to stick us with plastic. How did we get to a place where we are buying water in plastic? Are we being brainwashed to drink beverages that we know aren’t good for us? All of this plastic ends up in our own environment or in containers shipped to China to create more toxins there. We even buy back a lot of it to put back into our system again. Just think about all of the clean water, gas, time, energy and health sacrificed so that we can have the “convenience” of plastic.

The Chinese have had enough, and so have we. Instead of sticking it to citizens again, let’s put the responsibility for cleaning up this mess where it starts: upstream with the big corporations.

Helen Hoover

Kingston