Say NO to plastic bags

Sometimes I suffer from what is known here as "fernweh". Directly translated into english that would mean "missing the faraway" or "a yearning for faraway places". I have always enjoyed learning about other cultures, traditions and history of places around the world. I've been to India several times and it is a fascinating land with all its colourful traditions and diversities. Its a big country to explore in just a few weeks, so my trip there was always like enjoying a slice of pizza with spicy curry flavour. One bite at a time. Some days I feel like taking another piece of my pizza over India because there are still half of India which I would like to experience, but these days, circumstances plays an important influence over my last minute decisions "where to go for holidays?"

To dull my "fernweh" towards India, I followed Mukund in India
I always had a good laugh reading the things he wrote about himself, his country India and he kind of refresh my memories over my short visits to his country.

From his blog, I learned about Small Footprint, a blog about environmental and recently Small Footprint started a Green Challenge Change The World Wednesdays
My gardening friends should check out some tips from Small Footprint regarding slug, snails and deers that always munch out the garden.

Small Footprint's challenge last Wednesday was about plastic bags which shoppers always take for granted during shopping trips and it is becoming an environmental issue how these plastic shopping bags are being disposed later.

I am taking Small Footprint's challenge and help spread the word even further.

For a long time, the Swiss are used to carrying around foldable shopping bags in their bags, or there are always several folded neatly in their car. Of course there are still some shops that will automatically award shoppers with their plastic bags that are prettily designed with their labels printed on it and this of course is understandable as they need to market their brand name using "you" as a walking billboard.

Lately, there are some changes in the trend towards paperbags and biodegradable plastics. This is of course much better than non biodegradable plastics but generally most shops will ask the shoppers if they would like a bag for their newly purchased stuffs. This is where the shoppers are given a choice to say yes or no. If you have your own foldable shopping bags in your bag, then you can simply say, no thank you. If you say yes, some establishments charge an additional 30 Swiss rappen (about 0.30 USD)for the plastic bag.

If having to pay for a plastic bag to bring home your shopping goods is not enough to remind you about the cost of producing these plastics bags, wait till you are ready to dispose your garbage which includes the one you just paid for 30 swiss rappen with a compulsory disposable garbage bags issued by the local council. Nothing is free here. It even cost money to dispose rubbish, but that certainly helped me think twice before buying anything because it takes a lot more effort and costs to discard unwanted household products for garbage collection before the final dumping.

I happen to live in a district with a council that is in full gear about environmental friendly and awareness by supporting the public with excellent recycling and waste sorting facilities. It is actually a good practice when the garbage management begin from individual's home. Their effort successfully eliminated the ugly roadside rubbish pilling up. There are permanent bins in every housing area for disposing glass, recyclable plastic bottles and aluminium cans. Every third Saturday of the month, my neighbourhood packed their vehicles with their unwanted recycleable things and drive up to the compound of the council garbage sorting area and we deposit our big pieces of recyclable waste such as old mattresses, hardwares such as aluminium, steel, old batteries, etc into separate containers for the undertakers to take them to the specific recycling centre. Again, disposing all these old materials cost a few francs, but that helped increase the efficiency of waste management in a responsible way.

Every Friday, when the council collect the garbage around the housings, they will also collect big pieces of recycleable refuse but only when those items are marked with a special stickers which can be bought from the council.

The good thing about going shopping with my own reusable shopping bag is that, when its full and I can't stuff anymore things in it, then I just knew it that I had spent enough money for the day, and its time to go home, empty the shopping bag, earn more money before going shopping again.