“Promising start to first Bring Your Own Bag Day”

This Straits Times article dated Thursday 19 April describes the outcome of Singapore’s first ever Bring Your Own Bag Day. In this initiative, visitors of the supermarkets will have to use reusable bags when making a purchase or donate 10cents for a plastic bag. Don’t worry, moms, this happens only on the first Wednesday of every month.

I dare say this is one of the most daring endeavors I have seen in conservative Singapore. Factories in the past were only encouraged to reduce their carbon emissions, with rewards to those with lower emissions. Although this by itself had the potential to reduce quite a fair bit of carbon dioxide emission, the fact is that most people do not really know what they can do to help the environment as the policies were meant only for the large industries. This initiative aims to lower and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide Singapore emits through the incinerating of plastic bags. To do this, the problem is now imposed upon all of us; all grocery shoppers will have to use reusable bags to save the environment.

On the surface, this seems like a superbly good idea. Using reusable bags, making it hard if you want to use plastic bags, thus less plastic is used and less carbon dioxide emitted. However, there are still certain problems to this scheme.

Firstly, would be the weekly shoppers. Weekly shoppers indicate people who shop in bulk around once a week, and dump all the food into the fridge to be used at leisure over the week. The problem? As items are bought in bulk, a lot of bags must be used. It is definitely un realistic to get the consumer to bring 10 or more reusable bags to pocket or bag all of their goods. Plus, the reusable bags, even when folded extensively, are still bulky to a really large extent. Also, it is these shoppers that use up most of the plastic bags.

A solution to this would be to perhaps use make the reusable bags more compact as well as perhaps create a reusable bag holder in which consumers can store their reusable bags to make it more convenient to carry etc.

Moving on, even though the world has rapidly escalated towards the saving of the earth and the prevention of global warming, it is still far from enough. The 2 more industrial countries, the US as well as China, have yet to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming.

However, in the US and Chinese point of view, it is necessary not to sign the protocol so as to fully develop their respective countries. This is especially true for China as it has only recently started to really industrialise and modernise.

Being only a secondary 3 student, I do not have a very clear view of what is really happening in politics, etc.

At least, by using the reusable bags, we can say that we are doing a part. :)