I was just getting the hang of it when they changed the bloody bin labels at work again. I don’t know about you but it’s quite a task separating out trash at work. Heavens forbid the days I decide get a Guzman y Gomez’s burrito bowl. Their box is cardboard, the fork/spoon/wrapping plastic, the napkin’s paper, the Diet Coke can aluminium and there’s always this bits of bean I don’t like to eat which is then organic and you should see me stand in front of the kitchen bins like a retarded fuck trying to match the boxes!
I mean yeah it maybe awesome for your company’s sustainability rating but when disposing a coffee cup takes coordination effort (because the cup and the lid go in two separate places, man), it makes life hard and wasn’t innovation supposed to make it easy.
I was rather mindful in writing this piece that I might get grouped together with the “Greta Haters”. Don’t get me wrong – Greta is great (see what I did there). And I genuinely can see the threat she and her generation will be inheriting…oh dear lord – I have now officially put myself in the coal-loving, opportunist, Adani camp.
But can one be blamed for harbouring such attitudes?
When MH’s in Fiji started charging 10 cents per plastic bags, I became that part of the consumer market who paid the 10 cents. Actually I would get a $1.20 worth of plastic bags because what else was the alternate for the Nadi Town rubbish collection? It be Diwali for the hood mongrel pack. In Sydney, I buy $2.50 rolls of 25 plastic bags for my garbage here. It’s laughable when Fiji’s Prime Minister gets lauded for championing Climate Change for a Pacific which is in ‘crisis’. The only thing in crisis is the money that’s being collected under the pre-text of climate crisis and only thing that 10 cent levy is lining is those hideous grey sneakers one’s wearing to official events today (scoff I will if someone retorts back that one is having a foot problem – I will tell you about foot problems okay including about a two day old pedicure that refuses to dry out. Like seriously).
When we were growing up, the leftover foods used to be put in the refrigerator in numerous tiny silver pots or dishes with lids clogging up the shelves (which used to be an instigator for many an argument between my parents). Then Rups Big Bear came into our lives and cheap plastic containers made life an easy ice-cream heaven for everybody including the refrigerators in the suburbans of the Viti.
I think the biggest resistance to Greta and the likes of climate warriors is that their call-out to action is to a a generation of people who’ve come into the ease of plastic. The politicians, the policy-makers, the major wallet-spending consumer age range have transited from non-plastic time to a plastic era and asking for reductions in use, investment into more eco-friendly expensive products, is just asking a generation who’ve gotten lazy from the comfort of polymers really. There is a spot in my aunt’s pantry for the cling-wrap roll (she buys the bulk 250 meter size) and she will not be converting to beeswax cloth anytime soon, alright.
A friend recently tried to talk me into using a menstrual cup. First of all for someone with 5 right thumbs that spells out disaster. Maybe I’ll give it a go one day but would I consider reusable cotton pads in the interest of the planet? Nope. There are women in the workforce today especially in the South-Asian subcontinent heck even in the Pacific Islands who had no access to sanitary pads while growing up and relied on scrap cotton. While I understand the sustainability element, the socio-economic element of going back to something when one had to relive life’s bleeding hell twice again while washing off their period cloth instead of being able to throw it in a bin – that’s a big ask.
Speaking of plastic, one particular bitch that’s made life a whole lot more miserable for me lately is my credit card. And with Christmas around the corner, every time I take my wallet out of my bag these days, I swear I hear a groan.
Then there are those plastic homo sapiens. Especially the heterosexual male kind. The kind that look really, really good. The kind that make the cellulite in-between your thighs tremble for months, years. The kind that one day smack-bang in the middle of a packed supermarket makes you realise that that only thing in crisis is you.
Whatever your excuse, there is a plastic crisis out there. Take your fucking finger out.
Where is Shyamni? 