Does it strike you as incredible that the United States, which went to the moon and is currently bombing seven or eight countries using high-tech bombs, cannot figure out what to do with it’s own plastic?

And so we wind up with two recycling bins in Augusta, one a far drive away, and fewer people than ever will bother doing it once they see that the bins are full even more often (“Augusta to eliminate two of four recycling collection sites,” Dec. 20).

The problem is that there’s nowhere closer to actually recycle plastic waste into something useful. Why not build a plant in central Maine, and get a few new jobs? Think what it costs to send all this stuff thousands of miles to China.

Instead, with Augusta, the apparent plan is to dump it into the ocean — that’s where a lot of this stuff will wind up, as the ocean is downhill from everything. That, or the toxic chemicals will eventually leach out of landfills.

Really brilliant, America. Potential jobs — useful jobs — are staring us in the face. Instead, we just keep making stuff to bomb other countries.

Ted Elliott

Augusta