#planetorplastic - using hash tags in social media is the new thing we have learned to know and support any given cause. This is like grouping the random things in social media. This is easy way for anyone or government to know about what people are thinking about a given situation. I have been using social media for the past decade, but this is the first time I am using a "hash tag" cautiously. Though it was available for me to use, it is my choice now to use it for the "right cause". Likewise, I still have the childhood memories, when the plastics were introduced to me. This happened in a small city in southern India. Back then, during summer holidays we used to wait for my dad to bring some snack or anything to eat. There is nothing in our city to roam around or eat something fancy. I was introduced to "pani puri" (famous indian snack) when I was 13 years old. It gives you two feelings, one - instant about food and second - fright because your father is back home. We are called '90s kids. One day my father brought tender coconuts without a "straw" to drink it. I knew there is this thing called straw available, but not widely used. It was used in big shops, juice bars. The business case with straw was not viable for the street vendor I guess. I wondered how we could possibly drink it now. My father took the tender coconut which was already half cut by the vendor leaving a thin layer to break by knife or something sharp at your home. So he carefully removed a thin layer from the top and gave it to me to hold. I was thinking, so now do I have to drink it like this? Definitely it is going to spill, my logical brain cautioned me. Thankfully my father was not done yet. He took a utensil called "sembu" and placed it upside down over the tender coconut to cover the hole he already made in the tender coconut. I was wondered like "Ok now? How this water inside the coconut get transferred into this sembu". He suddenly turned the whole set up upside down, the water inside now slowly transferred into the sembu. The centrifugal force created instantly during the rotation not allowed the water inside coconut spill between the utensil and coconut, and the gravity done the rest of the work. You are right; I am a '90s kid and an engineer. Ok, here are the benefits of straw. You don't have to go through all the above mechanics, hygiene (may be or may be not) and most importantly if you blow inside any water it will make bubbles. Cool right.
The next plastic thing I was introduced to was pet bottle. We did not carry any pet bottles to school until we could afford a soft drink which came in pet bottle. So how we managed to drink water in schools, we can bifurcate into two time frames. During lunch break and not during lunch break. Not during lunch break - there was one or two water tanks available in my schools, with many taps on it to drain the water. Tanks are cleaned properly or not, were the water hygiene - different part of story. Who cared when you were fully drained by the P.T. period? So we had to make a small cavity with our hand and try to make it air tight (like taking prashadham from temples). Then place the hand under the tap and the water gets filled inside the cavity and flows over the hand. We used to drink the over flow water. The drinking speed should match the tap water flow otherwise the shirt will get some wetness. During lunch break - after finishing our lunch, we used to clean the ever-silver tiffin box and pour the water inside it and drink it - very simple. Though water does not have any taste, somehow I did not like to drink water in pet bottles. The water that sucked in directly from tanks have some kind of chillness in it, I liked it more than the water I had and having in pet bottles.
Taking bags to the shops - Thanks to the south Indian Tamil marriages on those times, they used to give "manjal pai" to denote thanks for coming for the event to the guests. They put interesting things inside the manjal pai for each age group. One coconut, one pair of betel leaves and pakku and one more important thing me and my siblings will search for was "aasai chocolate". After everything inside the bag was used for their purpose, this bag will be used to buy stuffs from the shops. We used to carry these bags to the shops and buy groceries for the home. After the introduction of polythene bags, it was kind of prestige issue as a child to carry the manjal pai to shops.
Like hashtags polluting the social media, plastic is used in everywhere and pollutingour planet. Now we can't imagine ourhome and daily life without plastics. Brush,phone, electronic goods, buckets, doors etc., everything we use is trying to beconverted into plastic. Reason low cost,less weight, ease of manufacture into any shape. The problem to be addressed is not all these tobe replaced with alternate material. Wecannot ask the space station to use metal bottle for drinking water, weightmatters there. We have to concentrate onnon-recyclable plastics. I am not sayingto go back to older methods to drink water or buy groceries, it is not feasibletoo. There were times there were noplastics, we had life at that time too. We can create "n" number of alternatesolutions. And with the help of socialmedia and hash tags we can spread simplest solution invented ordiscovered. I have read this somewhere "We do not inheritthe Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children". Be responsible; leave something for the nextgeneration to live for.
