Plastic bags are remarkably useful things. No matter shape, size or color, plastic bags must be one of the most commonly accepted, and most heavily used items in our modern, consumeristic society.
I cannot imagine how much adjustment I'd have to make if one day plastic bags were banned from my life.
Life would suddenly become so much more vulnerable, so much more exposed to the elements.
Sure, they are a bane of waste management- we've seen those pictures of towering bagged plastic pyramids -and them being non bio-degradable, they aren't kind to our natural earth.
But whilst one or two persons can possess that level of discipline and determination to go without using a single plastic bag in their lives, it is a different matter for many of us who have gotten accustomed to living with such.
There'd be so many changes I'd have to make. How I arrange my things, how I store my stuff, how I sort them out, how I toss out my trash, how I bring stuff around, how I bring stuff to and fro, groceries, meals, clothes, purchased items etc, etc, there'd be just so much to adjust to.
I suppose the advocates would agree that it is a small change for the good of the earth.
Like how they say that it isn't too difficult to use baskets and cotton and hemp and canvas to place things in. Except that in some parts of the world, namely, mine, hemp and canvas are seen as indie, customized stuff sold at hipster stores and which will cost me the sky, and I highly doubt any ah pek will be kind enough to let me have one of his gigantic hemp bags to cut up and re-use when he's re-using it himself.
Or how I can use just the canvas bags sold at the supermarkets (only $1!) and place my groceries in it instead of getting a plastic bag from the cashier. In a way, that does make a bit of sense, given that it is possible to place whatever I've bought into the large canvas bag and tote it around. But.... if I'm not using a plastic bag from the cashier, I'm also not supposed to use the clear ones that you tear off from a roll inside the supermarket near the fish and veggie section. How then am I going to bring that tilapia home? And my tomatoes and red peppers and apples feel so vulnerable without any protection from the harsher corners of the milk carton, the juice bottle and the egg carton!
No doubt, too, I could bring a tupperware and tiffin down to the hawker center and ask the stall owner to put my dish inside for me, but if I were buying more than one dish, or if I wanted a little bit of this and a little bit of that, how many containers would I need to bring down? Or say, if on impulse I wanted to buy chye tow kuay AND char kuay teow from the same stall but had only one container, what was I going to do? Choose between either dish? Or blame it on bad planning?
It takes much more effort and much more pre-planning to achieve a zero plastic bag lifestyle. Much, much more. It takes a conscious effort to not reach out for a plastic bag. It takes as much belief and determination to make it a lifestyle.
I haven't gotten to that level yet.
In fact, given how this stack looks like, I think I might never get there at all. -_-
Don't judge, please.
I'm not supposed to do this, I know. I'm not supposed to hoard plastic bags and keep them there for future use but instead end up using only the first few ones on top of the pile. But that's just how it is.
Or rather, how it has been.
It's not something to be proud of, either. That much I know. :)
But that is how many of us have lived our lives, even if we don't stack our plastic bags up this way. Some of us stash them by the side of the fridge. Some of us have them stuffed into baskets next to the dustbin. Some of us have them folded into squares and slotted neatly into re-used plastic (again!) containers salvaged from biscuit packs. We use them as protectors of our belongings. We use them to keep our memories. We use them to transport stuff around. Some of us don't fold the bag at all but re-use them immediately.
Multiple bags, multiple uses.
In a way, it works, using plastic bags to sort out our stuff. Somehow the clutter becomes less of a clutter when plastic bags are involved. It becomes an interesting observation, actually, to why and how a person chooses to store their stuff in this way, and perhaps, it can reveal alot of who we are. If not, at least a hint. :)
Some of us will see an abundance of plastic bags as an indication of mess, as an indicator of a mental problem. Some of us will see the abundance of plastic bags as a problem of fear, of hoarding, of keeping useless materials with us. It can be. It can indicate a problem. But at the same time, if we look beyond the mountains of accumulated crushed plastic bags, if we look beyond what looks like mess to us, perhaps we can read something deeper.
I watched a video that was circulating online the other day. Now, this video was not the most pleasant of videos. In it, an elderly lady was living in an apartment that was overrun with plastic bags and cockroaches. Honestly, the sight of all those cockroaches carpeting the floor, running all over the walls, running all over her plastic bags, running all over her shirt and her arms and running just all over everywhere was the most shocking, and repulsive (I admit) sight I'd ever seen.
But I re-watched the video a few times, and after a while, I realized that her hair was actually neatly tied up in a low ponytail, and her belongings were all in plastic bags. Maybe those weren't her own belongings but stuff that others had tossed away, but them being in her house meant that they were now hers. She hadn't taken the stuff inside the bags out. She hadn't spread them out around the house. Instead she had tied the tied bags one above the way, in such a way that they resembled a sloping hill of sorts.
And even as I wondered how she slept and how she sat on the red chair with all the bugs running all over her, even as I wondered if someone could feel this numb and this cold that even the feel of cockroaches creeping all over her arms and body were not uncomfortable to her, even as I wondered how she ate her food in such an environment as this, and if she even ate at home, I also wondered why she tied the tied plastic bags in such a manner. I wondered why she kept the things inside the plastic bags instead of taking them out. I wondered why, if she were such a dirty, hopeless, filthy mess, minus the cockroaches crawling all over them, the neat sloping hill of plastic bags seemed to form a kind of structure in an otherwise junk universe.
And I wondered if there was something in the midst of it all that we couldn't yet see. Was the outside (the plastic bags) more significant than the inside? Was the outside the belonging, the memory? Did the sight of those bags, all so neatly and preciously tied up, hold a meaning significant to her?
I won't know.
But they must have meant something to her.
The same way that the sight of a plastic bag can be more than just another piece of plastic meant to serve a functional purpose.
Remember that little kid who cut up a plastic bag into a soccer jersey, wrote the number of Lionel Messi on it and wore it over his shirt? He got a real jersey and a visit from Messi himself. What would have happened had he not had a plastic bag? What picture would he have been able to take? What hope would there have been?
For me, every plastic bag I have is a reminder to be thankful, for it means that today, this very day, I have had enough to buy groceries from the supermarket. It means that today, this very day, I've had enough to spend at a place that gives me a plastic bag for the item I've bought. It means that I've had enough to consume, and enough to dispel.
Sometimes, it is also enough to keep as a memory.
I once saw a woman on the train. She was carrying a Yaohan plastic bag with her. A brand new, shiny one, not one that was faded and crushed and untidy. A brand new one that looked like it had just been snapped off the cashier's counter- even though Yaohan has left our shores for ages.
I once found a pretty new Carrefour plastic bag at home too.
And I smiled, thinking of how Carrefour once used to be in Suntec City Tower 3 and how I still have things from the supermarket which are still in good condition, and how valued the times at this supermarket means to me.
I cannot imagine how much adjustment I'd have to make if one day plastic bags were banned from my life.
Life would suddenly become so much more vulnerable, so much more exposed to the elements.
Sure, they are a bane of waste management- we've seen those pictures of towering bagged plastic pyramids -and them being non bio-degradable, they aren't kind to our natural earth.
But whilst one or two persons can possess that level of discipline and determination to go without using a single plastic bag in their lives, it is a different matter for many of us who have gotten accustomed to living with such.
There'd be so many changes I'd have to make. How I arrange my things, how I store my stuff, how I sort them out, how I toss out my trash, how I bring stuff around, how I bring stuff to and fro, groceries, meals, clothes, purchased items etc, etc, there'd be just so much to adjust to.
I suppose the advocates would agree that it is a small change for the good of the earth.
Like how they say that it isn't too difficult to use baskets and cotton and hemp and canvas to place things in. Except that in some parts of the world, namely, mine, hemp and canvas are seen as indie, customized stuff sold at hipster stores and which will cost me the sky, and I highly doubt any ah pek will be kind enough to let me have one of his gigantic hemp bags to cut up and re-use when he's re-using it himself.
Or how I can use just the canvas bags sold at the supermarkets (only $1!) and place my groceries in it instead of getting a plastic bag from the cashier. In a way, that does make a bit of sense, given that it is possible to place whatever I've bought into the large canvas bag and tote it around. But.... if I'm not using a plastic bag from the cashier, I'm also not supposed to use the clear ones that you tear off from a roll inside the supermarket near the fish and veggie section. How then am I going to bring that tilapia home? And my tomatoes and red peppers and apples feel so vulnerable without any protection from the harsher corners of the milk carton, the juice bottle and the egg carton!
No doubt, too, I could bring a tupperware and tiffin down to the hawker center and ask the stall owner to put my dish inside for me, but if I were buying more than one dish, or if I wanted a little bit of this and a little bit of that, how many containers would I need to bring down? Or say, if on impulse I wanted to buy chye tow kuay AND char kuay teow from the same stall but had only one container, what was I going to do? Choose between either dish? Or blame it on bad planning?
It takes much more effort and much more pre-planning to achieve a zero plastic bag lifestyle. Much, much more. It takes a conscious effort to not reach out for a plastic bag. It takes as much belief and determination to make it a lifestyle.
I haven't gotten to that level yet.
In fact, given how this stack looks like, I think I might never get there at all. -_-
Don't judge, please.
I'm not supposed to do this, I know. I'm not supposed to hoard plastic bags and keep them there for future use but instead end up using only the first few ones on top of the pile. But that's just how it is.
Or rather, how it has been.
It's not something to be proud of, either. That much I know. :)
But that is how many of us have lived our lives, even if we don't stack our plastic bags up this way. Some of us stash them by the side of the fridge. Some of us have them stuffed into baskets next to the dustbin. Some of us have them folded into squares and slotted neatly into re-used plastic (again!) containers salvaged from biscuit packs. We use them as protectors of our belongings. We use them to keep our memories. We use them to transport stuff around. Some of us don't fold the bag at all but re-use them immediately.
Multiple bags, multiple uses.
In a way, it works, using plastic bags to sort out our stuff. Somehow the clutter becomes less of a clutter when plastic bags are involved. It becomes an interesting observation, actually, to why and how a person chooses to store their stuff in this way, and perhaps, it can reveal alot of who we are. If not, at least a hint. :)
Some of us will see an abundance of plastic bags as an indication of mess, as an indicator of a mental problem. Some of us will see the abundance of plastic bags as a problem of fear, of hoarding, of keeping useless materials with us. It can be. It can indicate a problem. But at the same time, if we look beyond the mountains of accumulated crushed plastic bags, if we look beyond what looks like mess to us, perhaps we can read something deeper.
I watched a video that was circulating online the other day. Now, this video was not the most pleasant of videos. In it, an elderly lady was living in an apartment that was overrun with plastic bags and cockroaches. Honestly, the sight of all those cockroaches carpeting the floor, running all over the walls, running all over her plastic bags, running all over her shirt and her arms and running just all over everywhere was the most shocking, and repulsive (I admit) sight I'd ever seen.
But I re-watched the video a few times, and after a while, I realized that her hair was actually neatly tied up in a low ponytail, and her belongings were all in plastic bags. Maybe those weren't her own belongings but stuff that others had tossed away, but them being in her house meant that they were now hers. She hadn't taken the stuff inside the bags out. She hadn't spread them out around the house. Instead she had tied the tied bags one above the way, in such a way that they resembled a sloping hill of sorts.
And even as I wondered how she slept and how she sat on the red chair with all the bugs running all over her, even as I wondered if someone could feel this numb and this cold that even the feel of cockroaches creeping all over her arms and body were not uncomfortable to her, even as I wondered how she ate her food in such an environment as this, and if she even ate at home, I also wondered why she tied the tied plastic bags in such a manner. I wondered why she kept the things inside the plastic bags instead of taking them out. I wondered why, if she were such a dirty, hopeless, filthy mess, minus the cockroaches crawling all over them, the neat sloping hill of plastic bags seemed to form a kind of structure in an otherwise junk universe.
And I wondered if there was something in the midst of it all that we couldn't yet see. Was the outside (the plastic bags) more significant than the inside? Was the outside the belonging, the memory? Did the sight of those bags, all so neatly and preciously tied up, hold a meaning significant to her?
I won't know.
But they must have meant something to her.
The same way that the sight of a plastic bag can be more than just another piece of plastic meant to serve a functional purpose.
Remember that little kid who cut up a plastic bag into a soccer jersey, wrote the number of Lionel Messi on it and wore it over his shirt? He got a real jersey and a visit from Messi himself. What would have happened had he not had a plastic bag? What picture would he have been able to take? What hope would there have been?
For me, every plastic bag I have is a reminder to be thankful, for it means that today, this very day, I have had enough to buy groceries from the supermarket. It means that today, this very day, I've had enough to spend at a place that gives me a plastic bag for the item I've bought. It means that I've had enough to consume, and enough to dispel.
Sometimes, it is also enough to keep as a memory.
I once saw a woman on the train. She was carrying a Yaohan plastic bag with her. A brand new, shiny one, not one that was faded and crushed and untidy. A brand new one that looked like it had just been snapped off the cashier's counter- even though Yaohan has left our shores for ages.
I once found a pretty new Carrefour plastic bag at home too.
And I smiled, thinking of how Carrefour once used to be in Suntec City Tower 3 and how I still have things from the supermarket which are still in good condition, and how valued the times at this supermarket means to me.