LET’S STEM THE PLASTIC TIDE

ONE if the most encouraging things I’ve read about recently has been the opening of packaging-free shops around the world.

They are springing up in many of the world’s cities and people who care about our planet are flocking to them, bringing their own containers.

We are constantly reminded that we are drowning the world in plastic, but so far nobody seems to have found a way to halt the flow of plastic garbage. Now there are shops that sell groceries that are free of plastic. You want milk?

Bring your glass bottle and fill it in the shop. The same with cooking oil, peanut butter, jam, honey, coffee, tea. Bring your washed glass jars and fill them, weigh them and pay. Then when they’re empty again, wash them and bring them back for a refill.

It’s not really a new idea. I can remember my parents going to Mr Keun’s general dealer’s in Noupoort and having sugar and tea weighed and poured into brown paper packets. They brought their own bottles to have filled with paraffin and they returned hessian bags to be filled with coal from the heap in the shop’s back yard. Cheese was cut from a big block of cheddar, weighed and wrapped in waxed paper.

Nails and screws were weighed into packets, not sold in plastic bubble packs like today’s products.

If you wanted a torch battery you bought one. You didn’t have to take a sealed pack of three. (Nothing uses three batteries, so one of them is always wasted. That’s the plan.)

I don’t know of any packagingfree shops in our part of the country, but I think you can buy honey and olive oil by the litre in a few shops in the Winelands. I know we are not about to change they way we buy groceries in the next year or two.

We are too lazy. It’s so much easier to toss a pre-packed bag of bananas into your trolley instead of selecting just the three you need and having them weighed. Maybe if we each do just a little to reduce the amount of plastic packaging we use we can make a difference.

Nobody can stem the plastic tide single handedly, but if a million of us each opt for a paper bag instead of a plastic one, or bring our own cloth shopping bag instead of adding a plastic bag to the shopping list, that’s a million fewer pieces of plastic ending up in the sea. Last Laugh

A man appeared in court for a minor traffic offence and sat restlessly all morning waiting for his case to be heard.

Eventually his name was called late in the afternoon and he was told his case was adjourned until the following day.

“Oh for Pete’s sake! Why?” He shouted. “A R100 fine for contempt of court,” the judge said. The man took out his wallet and the judge said: “you don’t have to pay now. You can pay tomorrow.”

“I’m not wanting to pay,” the man said. “I’m just looking in my wallet to see if I can afford two more words.”