Plastics

It's strange sometimes . This whole plastic bag thing in Singapore has been going on for quite a while. Supermarkets have started it , but six months into it , they seem to have abandoned the idea completely and now , same as before , we see hordes of people coming out of the supermarket with their plastics bags . Are we lacking the determination to see through the entire project or is it the case that Singaporeans are completely unteachable. I hate to think that it is the latter, but clearly , it seems so.

Over the holidays , i visited the supermarket on numerous occasions to fuel my cooking / baking ambitions and every time i refuse to accept a plastic bag , they stare at me as if i was the one destroying the environment . The best story would definitely be the time i decided to invest in one of those synthetic bag things which NTUC sells . So i brought it to the cashier along with all my groceries. The cashier , not only packed my groceries into the plastic bags , she tied the 2 baguettes i bought into one plastic bag (the baguettes obviously don't fit) and the amazing thing is that she proceeded to open another new plastic bag , and put my synthetic bag in it. I stared at her . Incredulously . Only then did she realise that i intended to use the bag i bought immediately . It goes without saying that i took out all the items she had packed in the plastic bag and repacked them into my bag .

Today , was another story . Last term in school , one of the LTB groups (i'm assuming) worked with booklink on a green campaign and they had this whole "yay ! .. we are not going to use plastic bags ! " thing going on which i thought was fabulous.

i walked in today and i don't usually walk into the bookshop at all other than the start of the term to get my books ..so when i was there today , i saw those cloth synthetic bags which people can reuse and they even had a sign that said , bring back the bags so that we can pass them on to other customers and i thought to myself .. wow .. that's nice, so .. i queued . got to the counter asked for my books and the receptionist was scanning all my books , ringing them up at the cashier and when she was done .. she asked .. "you want plastic book cover ?" . i almost fainted .

There is a deep perversion of the green campaign going on right now . It's definitely an issue . You don't just jump onto the bandwagon and say we're green for the sake of saying it. Until you are ready , to not just cut cost (no plastic bags) but to forgo profit (no plastic covers) , i wouldn't be too hasty to call myself green .