By
Archana Somashekar
I went shopping for groceries and vegetables & fruits yesterday at one of the big chain stores. I like to shop here coz I have choice of a large variety of stuff, I can compare prices, I can feel what I’m buying and I find doing so while pushing a cart through the aisles very relaxing, specially at the end of a hectic day.
I got back and began putting things away – spices here, cereals there, fruits and vegetables in a third place, waiting to be washed and then moved into the refrigerator. As I was doing so, opening plastic bag after plastic bag, slitting the mouths of plastic pouches to put stuff into their respective bottles & pushing empty non-reusable plastic bags into the trash can, I began wondering what I was up to.
I’m someone who is focused on the sustainable development and environmental conservation & here I am disposing tons of plastic bags. The trash in anyone’s trashcan shows just how upwardly-mobile you are – the more upwardly mobile the more such non-biodegradable trash that is generated.
I’ve been questioning my purchase behavior. Shopping in such marts is a wonderful experience – clean & neat, everything looking beautiful - but at what cost? The mouths of the large carry bags are sealed with tags which you cannot open and can only be cut off. When leaving the doorkeeper counts the number of plastic bags that you are carrying out, as marked on your receipt. You cannot say ‘I wish to carry this stuff in other cloth bags that I’m carrying with me for this purpose’.
Should I be instead change my shopping habits and move back to the corner grocery store? However, there I don’t know the number of brands that exist, can’t compare the various prices to make my final choice. There too most stuff is to be found in their beautiful looking, environmentally detrimental packaging. I remember days in the neighborhood grocery shop when the spice you wanted was measured out on a piece of old newspaper placed on the weighing machine and the paper wrapped up into a small bundle. Only paper bags were used anywhere that you went. This was about 25-30 years ago.
In my attempt to reduce the tons of plastic bags in my house I’ve made a deal with the neighborhood store where I can return the plastic bags and hand over more such that are lying around. They’ve agreed to accept them and use them to serve other customers; their overheads also reduce with this to some extent. However, that still doesn’t solve things. How much is my wonderful shopping experience contributing to the greenhouse effect?
Another thing that troubles me, and which I’ve been thinking about for a few years now, is the disposal of all the bottles and tubes that we now use. Every cosmetic product comes in bottles, tubes (whether plastic or aluminium) and pouches. After one has finished using the product one does not know what to do with the container and it goes and joins the regular dump. Very few these days collect them and sell them to the travelling kabadiwala. If they are sold to the kabadiwala they may be reused and re-enter the market with spurious material filled in them. As a conscious consumer how can I ensure that this doesn’t happen and that the environment is also protected?
Why is it that the companies manufacturing the materials in the bottles and tubes, does not take them back? If they did there would be no fear of adulterated and spurious material entering the market in the reused containers. After all glass bottles of soft drinks go back to the manufacturer for refilling and return to the market, to yet again follow the same system. The same distribution system is used to get the bottles back to the manufacturer. This can be done by manufacturers of other products as well.
Considering how important money seems to be to everyone, this can be a win-win situation for all with the country enjoying an improvement in its position as an environment friendly nation. The companies can collect the containers back and reuse them. The consumer can be offered an incentive as in 10 paise per container or by weight or something free in return for all the containers returned. The shops can be encouraged by giving them some financial incentive as well. The company can then ask the government to give it carbon points for all the containers that it manages to retrieve and recycle. The country’s position will improve, considering the number of carbon points that it’s managed to increase through the companies. This would help to reduce the amount of municipal solid waste that ends up at the dumps and the landfill, specially considering that we do not have proper sanitary landfills in any city yet.
The way I look at it, the only loser here seems to be the kabadiwalas and the ragpickers who survive on such material. Where the kabadiwalas are concerned they have other materials to deal in too. In any case they exploit the ragpickers, not giving them the remuneration they deserve in exchange of the materials they so painstakingly collect and bring to them. The solution to improving the condition of the ragpickers (specially considering that its mostly children who are involved in this trade) is to assign them areas where they can go for door to door collection of such containers and plastic bags – segregation of waste at source – so they do not have to face the hazards that they do now – sorting and collecting material barehanded from the putrid rubbish which reeks for miles, so much so that we can’t pass the rubbish dumps without closing our noses to the stench; sharp metals, broken glass, exposed hypodermic needles, blades, etc. piercing their bare hands and legs, leading to grave injuries and diseases, etc.
However, though these things can be done, what about our buying behavior? What do we do? Where do we go? What choices do we make?
