People who shop with me will know I reject plastic bags whenever possible. Bra made me feel quite embarrassed that day, cos she kinda “Wah! Every plastic bag you also dont want!” and basically didnt reject a single one when we shopped.
(This bag-rejecting habit has impacted my life so much my family once ran out of bags for household refuse. 😛 I also get irritated when I see people not rejecting plastic bags when they obviously dont need them. I’m sure girls with the fashionably big bags nowadays dont need p.bags for every single item they buy)
She’s disturbed that NUS recently imposed a 10 cents charge for plastic bags campus wide while I’m disturbed that the gahmen has yet to impose such charges islandwide. If I’m not wrong, IKEA is the only retailer in Singapore to charge customers for plastic bags.
To be honest, sometimes I feel there’s no purpose in my being environmentally-conscious. What difference would a few plastic bags make?
The talk at Awareness Place yesterday served as a timely reaffirmation of my actions before I revert to my old plastic-bag-stashing ways. (Btw, Chyork went too! He’s so on! And I saw Boon Kian without expecting to. It’s high time I drag bring more friends along to stop the KMS gang from mistaking poor Chyork for my boyfriend.)
In his talk Earth Day Special: Environmental Mindfulness, the speaker Joe Lim (Project Manager, from non-profit Singapore Environment Council) reminded me that:
- Although a few degrees’ rise in temperature seems pretty harmless, it will trigger new diseases. The poorest people in the world are going to be the worst hit as they won’t have the means to deal with such problems.
- Recycling is in itself a pollutive process, because electricity is needed and pollutants are given out. Most people, like me, will buy things according to our whims and fancies thinking, “It’s awrrite, I can always recycle the packaging”. We kinda forget that the preventive measures of reducing and reusing are much more helpful.
I’ll think twice before buying things now! Even as a girl, the age-old mystery of how girls can never have enough bags, clothes, and shoes still confounds me. Rational thinking slowly abandons us when we see aforementioned objects of desire. It seems like guys are increasingly victims of this. (Hor, Eric?)
As for Bra, I doubt our gap in ideas is going to be bridged anytime soon, and green-preaching is not going to work for anyone under 25. But I hope I can move her with my actions.
I’m also quite tired of finding myself left with up to 5 plastic bags big and small after my seemingly-innocent dimsum binge. One for the siewmai, one for the yam cake, and one for the bao. To top it off, I get a a big one to carry all the small ones. I’ve had enough. A lunchbox will be picked out as one of the lucky permanent residents in my bag soon.
放。空。 