Plastic Bags

I've taken upon myself to protect the environment by using less plastic bags. It's frightening how Singapore being such a small country, actually uses twice as many plastic bags a year compared to Australia. I can't remember the exact reason why plastic bags are bad for enviornment but I vaguely remember it has something to do with the fact that they are not biodegradeable.

So, nowadays whenever I do my grocery shopping, I would ask for less bags. I don't even want my heavier package double-bagged because I am prepared to take the extra effort and deal with it. The worst case scenario would be the plastic bag break but from experience, they don't do that unless there's something sharp among my purchases.

True, some people would say they take back the plastic bags and recycled them as trash bags. But do you really need that many plastic bags for your trash?

I was buying some grocery this afternoon and queued behind this old lady and her maid. I took one look at her trolley and fumed. She had her items all wraped in clear plastic bags, those you normally used to put fruits in and she was demanding the cashier to pack at most two items into one large plastic bags. Wtf? Surely a stupid detergent does not need 2 layers of bags and bread does't need to be double bagged.

I felt the urge to tap her shoulders and ask her if she knew just how ridiculous she was but decided against it. It's not like I have that much time to reason with an old lady plus at the end of the day, it really boils down to individual's effort to protect the enviornment.