Letters to the editor — April 18

Your views

• Published April 18, 2008

• Comments (0)

Steve Shanewise, Olympia

Olympia should impose a bag tax

Our family tries hard to bring canvas bags when we go shopping at the grocery store and we actually feel guilty when we forget and come home with 20 or so of those cheap plastic petroleum products that cashiers hand out like it’s a contest to see who can get rid of them first.

We often feel like outcasts when we check out and quickly throw our own canvas bags before the cashier is able to score a few new points. However something happened recently that made me feel like we are not as alone as we thought.

I don’t know, maybe it was the afterglow from the news reports about the recent Seattle bag tax initiative. Seattle grocery stores will begin charging for those environmental earthsores, and the money collected will support environmental initiatives. But at my recent trips to two grocery stores on the west side, one cashier actually thanked me for bringing my own bag, and at another the customer before me had her own canvas bag. At both stores, we all discussed the issue and agreed Olympia should follow in Seattle’s footsteps.

Let’s not let the afterglow of the media coverage fade. Let’s use the enthusiasm in the grocery store checkout lines to pass our own bag tax in Olympia.

Let’s use the money collected to enhance local green projects that will offset our petroleum and paper bag footprints.

Robert Kam, Olympia

Lacey has become a populous wasteland

I would have to agree with the letter “Lacey is a greedy city.” This community is growing like a cancerous tumor and is consuming everything in its path.

It is so sad to see a community with a small-town atmosphere explode into a populous wasteland. Trees are plowed under in a blink of an eye and cars are backed up in traffic as far as a person can see. I will have to agree that growth within a community is essential because stagnation can only lead to decay but it must be painstakingly planned to control its pace and detail.

Before too long we will hear, “Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do — Cops in Lacey, Washington.”