Osoyoos Town Council last week decided its response to appeals by Osoyoos Secondary School students for tougher environmental measures.
Council stopped short of doing what the students requested – launching a cigarette butt recycling program and banning plastic drinking straws – but they went further than an administration recommendation to deny one or both of the requests due to cost.
Councillor Mike Campol said the OSS students were “very articulate, very well spoken, very well researched,” when they brought the ideas to council on May 22.
The plastic straw ban was proposed by students Patricia Bratton and Holly Duguid. A proposal for more cigarette butt receptacles and a recycling program was put forward by Seth Kriese, Faith Stark and Rheanna Harfman.
“I’m aways encouraged when I see people that young trying to get involved in municipal politics and environmental issues,” Campol said. “I think some of these are worth exploring, specifically the cigarette butt recycling.”
Campol introduced a motion calling for administration to determine the costs of these actions and to bring this information to the 2019 business plan discussion later this year.
That motion was carried, but not before a “rant” by Councillor C.J. Rhodes.
Rhodes noted that most people look up when they walk around, but if they look at the ground in front of the Owl Pub, they will see “three, four, 500 cigarette butts laying on the ground” placed there by people who don’t “care about our community.”
“I have equal contempt for almost all plastic materials in our community and in our world in general,” Rhodes said, pointing out that there is an island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean the size of France.
“I’m very, very supportive of banning, not just waiting for corporate people to come around because I don’t trust a lot of their decisions in this,” said Rhodes, who added praise for Jojo’s Cafe, which has eliminated plastic straws.
Mayor Sue McKortoff noted that A&W is also getting rid of plastic straws, and she added that other plastics such as coffee lids, stir sticks, cutlery and plastic bags are also a problem.
When councillors started discussing bans on straws, plastic bags and utensils, Campol jumped back in to remind council that his motion was not to ban these items, but rather to determine the costs.
McKortoff wanted to go further, while also stopping short of an outright ban, so she introduced a second motion to ask administration to draft a letter of support for the students that she can send to businesses asking them to consider eliminating plastic staws and other single-use plastic items.
She suggested a friendly approach of asking businesses to consider this and praising the fact that some businesses have already taken this step.
“We just want to encourage them. That’s the first step,” she said.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
