To the Members of Mount Pleasant Town Council-
I have been picking up plastic bags and Styrofoam waste in Mt. Pleasant with the adopt a highway program and at bus stops for the past 18 years.
I've been doing it elsewhere in Charleston since 1976, 41 years.
I believe it is time to end this wasteful and ultimately useless practice. Our family uses reusable bags extensively. We no longer accept plastic one use bags at all. We've nearly eliminated our use of plastic straws. We recycle over 80% of our household waste, including composting all of our food and yard waste.
I am aware that a Koch Brothers funded campaign to defeat or delay the Town's proposed plastic bag ban is operating. It's their current iteration of their ten year old campaign, recycling and perverting concepts of freedom, volunteerism and community so that we can all continue to eat local shrimp and crabs which are contaminated with mircroparticles of plastic waste which end up in our bloodstreams after they're done destroying our landscape's appearance and killing animals and sea life.
I will be at Town Council Tuesday. I have served this town and protected it's public transit services for 7 years. It has been exhausting and consumes much of my free time. I continue to do that work because I understand the freedom of movement and dignity of hundreds of my neighbors is at stake. It is now a commitment which, after winning the half penny sales tax referendum, that I cannot honorably walk away from. It is work in which we regularly meet the paid opposition of the Koch Brothers.
If the town does not pass this ordinance, I will end all my efforts at volunteer contributions to trash cleanup both with Adopt a Highway and at the bus stops. Each time I see plastic waste in the town, I will distribute images of it marked with the names of those elected officials who have perpetuated it. I will ask the public to join me in calling them and suggesting that they go pick it up. I don't think it likely the Koch Brothers, so interested in our community now, will be wiling to finance a permanent, paid effort to clean up the waste they perpetuate and manufacture.
I would strongly suggest that those members of our council who choose to vote against a ban against single use plastics be sure that whatever front group the Koch brothers are paying to meddle in our affairs here pays both enough to ensure their political loyalty and reelection and enough to finance an endowment for the perpetual collection of the trash they have forced upon the Town of Mount Pleasant.
William J. Hamilton, III
Citizen, Writer, Activist, Lawyer
Click here to Reply or Forward
40.23 GB (39%) of 101 GB used