As if last week hadn’t been bad enough on the home front — although vastly improving — it was still startling to be told at last night’s dinner table that we were no longer going to have plastic bags in the household.
We are to cut out as much plastic as possible as our personal pledge on World Ocean Day.
I didn’t need to be told why we were to do this. In fact if I get another lecture about how dreadfully polluted we have made our planet I will stuff plastic bags in my ears.
People know this. They know about climate change. Some probably don’t fully believe or comprehend the problem or what they should be doing about it, and some are prepared to destroy the future of our world and their grandchildren for the sake of immediate greed. But the time for warning lectures is waaay over.
There is nothing wrong with telling our youngest children of the hideous dangers and horrible consequences, especially if accompanied by appropriate action and efforts to give them some hope that they can change their future.
It appears to have its effects. Our resident tree-hugger, the Hope of the Side, has been a staunch environmentalist since kindergarten, when I was obliged to craft seaweed costumes out of video tape for the kindy concert.
Various sea creatures endangered by ropes of plastic bags and other rubbish sang and danced their way around the front veranda to implore their adoring parental audience to save the planet.
A generation later, the Hope of the Side’s own children are still bringing home “craft” from their preschool to show the effects of air and ocean pollution.
The dirty water is a real menace, I have the stain on the back seat upholstery to prove it.
But all to the higher purpose, the result of which is we now have the household decree to ban plastic bags and use as little plastic as possible.
I very nearly needed to blow into a brown paper bag (yes, they still exist, mostly in bottle shops) to stave off a panic attack.
But okay, no use just telling those world leaders to stop wasting money talking if we aren’t going to take more personal action than just not leaving rubbish on the beach.
The leaders need to take their big meeting dollars and go home to put them to use on alternative energy schemes, far more carefully planned and monitored development and other vital projects.
And we are to find ways to stop using plastic in the house. Eeek. After a while I calmed down because I remembered the days when we didn’t have plastic stuff.
Speaking from my childhood, I remember when my school lunch boxes were either paper bags or toffee tins. Fiji children had neatly newspaper wrapped roti parcels or cassava or sandwiches in greaseproof paper.
Remember greaseproof paper? Don’t worry, it’s still around.
We mostly just used to drink out of the school taps, but if we had to carry water it was in a screw top glass bottle. Plenty of those around since many winemakers stopped using corks.
When we put things in the ice chest or refrigerator they were in glass bowls and things stored in the pantry were in screwtop jars.
Grandma had her flour and sugar and pickles in big ceramic pots and I have a few of them still. My mother favoured fancy china canisters with soppy Bambi deers peeping coyly around the sides for her biscuits and other consumables.
The good stuff is the stainless steel, containers with lids for everything from spices to cake and those multipurpose tiffin carriers.
It’s a real nostalgia trip to think about those ordinary, clever ways and everyday, non-polluting items we used when plastic wasn’t so readily around.
String and rubber bands were on hand to keep things in place.
As for household rubbish, I know a woman to this very day from whose rubbish bin you could eat your breakfast.
Absolutely no bin liners. She just wraps up all scraps in newspaper before they go in. A fine way to recycle your The Fiji Times.
No need to rabbit on about rubbish disposal and storage. If you don’t know, ask Aaji or Bubu.
Right now I have to do a house wide survey of all available shopping bags of calico, hessian and other sustainable, recyclable materials. Then I must find a way to have them usefully and attractively displayed at the door so I don’t get to the supermarket tomorrow and have to leave without my shopping.
Because no more plastic bags.
PS: We got back our stolen car mentioned in last week’s column, thanks to efforts of friends, people in the neighbourhood and the police officers who apprehended those involved. And thanks to those kind folk who sent notes of concern on social media — I’m fine.
* The writer is a regular contributor to this column. Views expressed are hers and not of this newspaper.
