Plastic fantastic
The other hero of the day is a plastic bag. I won’t touch the issue of those big plastic bags you get at the end of your visit to the supermarket. You all know by now about the existence of fancy reusable textile bags that we normally shall be using.
Let’s have those little transparent, almost invisible plastic bags you’d use to pack fruits and veggies, in scope of our attention.
There’s only one supermarket in Ashgabat, it’s called Ympash. It is a rather interesting place, locals spend their weekends with families on the last floor where all the entertainment is concentrated.
All’s fine, but there is one exceptional feature i haven’t seen anywhere else — every single item is packed in a separate plastic bag at the cashier. Toothbrush, toothpaste, pen, notebook — everything gets its own little “house”, and then gets packed into another, bigger bag.
Because you won’t want to walk around with millions of bags in your hands, would you?
Customers’ refusals are not accepted, Turkmenian customer-oriented service is unshakable and harsh sometimes.
In Pristina, cashiers are surprised if you don’t take the bag. You are looked at as if you were a black sheep. “It’s free”, they say, “I won’t take it even if you pay me to do so”, I answer.
Everybody takes them, as a result there is a lot of trash on the streets: plastic bags waltzing with the wind along Mother Theresa boulevard, papers flying all over the place, cigarette butts swimming in the fountains, plastic/glass bottles everywhere… It’s sad to see.
Kyiv. Same story. “It’s free”. I parry I am allergic and let them decide how on Earth this is possible.
I do not suggest we abandon the plastic bags completely, but reducing its use is very possible. Clearly, there are certain products such as a bag of sugar/ flour, ice cream, sour milk, meat; it would be foolish not to pack them for additional protection. But in most other cases, plastic bag is just a useless stuff, a tribute to tradition and habit.
Transparent plastic bags are like jelly fish, they fly over the city, get stuck on the branches of trees, in the bushes, mess under your feet. My inner aesthete wrings his hands and desperately wants to unsee. But not only aesthetics is the issue here. I saw a pigeon couple of days ago, one wing of which was tangled in such a a plastic bag. What more can I say?
I saw the insane beauty of nature in Turkmenistan: the stifling desert, velvet mountains, incredible underground cave, hot springs…And bags, bags everywhere.
In Kosovo, it has hurt my eyes to look around. Was it worth it to fight for their country, for this piece of land, not to love it to such extent that living in a trash bin is normal?
In Kiev, these pictures shake and hit me with more pain, because it is home.
What can we all do? I suggest we give ourselves 1 sec to ask one simple question — what for?. This subtle but great action carries tremendous potential for change.
