Being environmental-friendly - plastics

Didn't know yesterday was Bring Your Bag Day, meaning shoppers of (major supermarkets?) have to either bring their own bags, buy an 80cents reusable bag or pay 10cents for each plastic bag to store their groceries.

However, what shoppers do later with the reusable bags is another thing. Will they continue using it, bringing it to shops when doing grocery shopping? Or will it be stashed away in one corner of the house, labeled as rubbish? Hopefully it will be the former.

It's a really good campaign because it's aimed at public awareness and participation. I'm glad this campaign from this year onwards would not be just a yearly affair but will instead be implemented every first Wednesday of the month. But what about the rest of the month?

Consider this: 1 day of each month means only 12 out of 365 days will there be a possible decrease in plastic bags being used.

That's a tiny amount! I think NEA should at the same time promote to retailers the use of biodegradable bags. After all, this is a 2-way thing and both shoppers and shops are part of the public. If the shops advocate environmental-friendly attitudes, then it will influence the shopper to take more notice of what he/she is doing. Also, what if there are some spontaneous last minute shopping to do, there are no reusable bags around and you do not want to get another because you already have 10 others at home? Then shoppers can still get a biodegradable plastic bag from the shop and not a normal plastic bag. Environment taken into account. I feel a reusable bag would be far better than a biodegradable one though since a reusable bag can be used for many years while a biodegradable bag would most likely be thrown away after use a couple of times, which means more bags being consumed, equating to more materials for making the bags needed and thus more needs to be taken from earth. Plus the environment don't stop being destroyed just to wait for you to become environmental-friendly. Sometimes I cannot stand all this discussing and signing treaties here and there. Sheesh, you think the earth stop rotating for you, is it? Or that while you take 10 years to discuss a treaty (and decide to sign it), global warming will stop for you until you decide to sign it? Please! We're just itsy bitsy ants in this huge (and expanding?) universe. Nothing stops for us, even if you're the President of some important country on a tiny planet called Earth among millions of other planets. Even the earth don't stop for us (or you). Save the environment? Just do it already!

Just wondering, what about the smaller stores, do they take part in the campaign too?

So everybody, use reusable bags whenever you can, ok! Or if you are just buying a small packet of sweets or some small stuff which you can put into your bags/pockets/hold in hand, please do resist asking for a plastic bag, or rather, tell the cashier you don't need a plastic bag.

I do quite frequently tell them I don't need one. Especially in NUS when we buy food from the push-cart vendors, we don't really need a plastic bag to put the plastic container and chopsticks in just to carry it 2 metres away to a table to eat. If you know that you're going to consume your food soon, please don't waste the plastic bags. Most of the time they get thrown away when they're not even dirty or spoilt. I'm quite uncomfortable with eating at Megabites too because of the large amounts of Styrofoam plates and plastic utensils used. Kind of wish they would be more environmental-friendly. I don't feel that NUS has done anything, whether encouraging students or vendors, to reduce the use of plastic. Oh well, maybe in this case there really cannot be much done because what else can you use to store food, right? I just feel really uncomfortable seeing university students not telling the vendors that they don't need the plastic bags, as well as seeing the many plastic containers in bins. Imagine this going on for one year! It's quite a lot of wastage. Actually things like that have been going on school, especially canteens prior to the closure of the arts canteen.

So this also means don't leave your computer on unnecessarily or use it for too long. Save electricity = save fuel = save the earth!

=P
Hey, there's an unwired life out there, you know! You just have to find it.