Is this really necessary? PICTURE / GETTY IMAGES
I grew up in a strange, alien era, when food packaging was quaint, old-fashioned and soon to be replaced by a wonder product — plastic.
Our milk, in limited varieties, arrived in pint-sized glass bottles sealed with recyclable aluminium foil lids. I say "arrived" because a vendor delivered it to the gate, early in the morning, removing our clean, empty bottles and the right number of tokens to pay for the fresh milk. There was no plastic in sight: even the milk crates were steel. The vendor (called a milkman) returned the glass bottles to the milk treatment plant in Wanganui East where they were sterilised and re-used. Some of the milkmen drove electric-powered milk floats!
Our bread (often delivered by the grocer) came wrapped in waxed paper — if sliced — or enclosed in a single strip of paper if unsliced. No plastic bags.
Our jam was in jars — mind you, that was mostly home-made, along with bottled fruit — and our condiments were in glass or cardboard. Our meat was fresh and wrapped in paper and we watched our bacon being sliced before the grocer wrapped it, first in greaseproof then brown paper. Honey came in waxed cardboard with a counter-sunk cardboard lid and groceries were delivered in paper bags and cardboard boxes, all of which were re-used.
No cling-wrap, no plastic rubbish bags, no special plastic bags for sandwiches and no plastic "boxes" for storage or lunches. Our parents stored paper bags for re-use and my lunch box was a metal biscuit tin.
How did we cope with such backward packaging?
If we went to the shop to buy incidental items, we brought them home in a string bag.
As infants we wore cloth napkins fastened with steel safety pins — no plastic, no velcro — and all of our clothes were made of natural products; synthetic attire was around but not popular. Our floors were bare wood, linoleum or wool carpet and there wasn't a plastic doily to be found on any of the furniture.
It all seems so long ago now but we bought or grew fresh produce, bought and stored such things as flour and sugar in bulk in sacks (not plastic) and the closest thing to plastic was the bakelite telephone. True, we did have vinyl records, but we were hardly going to throw them into a landfill.
And somehow we did quite well without polystyrene! When we ordered something from out of town (a rare thing) it arrived in a cardboard box, cushioned from impact and jolting by shredded paper or sawdust.
We did have a product that looked a lot like plastic. Cellophane was the packaging of choice for things like potato chips and snack foods, and it is 100 per cent biodegradable.
My point is, people are wondering how they can possibly manage without plastic. Well, we did it before and we can do it again.
But we have to want to and we have to care.
Supermarkets are focusing on single-use plastic bags while their aisles are crammed with plastic packaging, all of it destined for the landfill if unable to be recycled.
The reason for it all, so we are told, is because we demand it. It's our fault that everything we buy is encased in petroleum-based poison and they will pander to our wishes to ensure their large profits continue and our needs are met, not necessarily in that order.
So, it's up to us. Stopping the planet from dying under the weight of our rubbish is our responsibility. If we demand things are wrapped in plastic, they will continue to be wrapped in plastic. So we have to stop asking for it and look for less "packaged" alternatives.
Unfortunately, plastic and its affordability has enabled us to benefit from many things once beyond our financial reach. Our motor cars, electronics, home appliances and bathroom cabinet items rely on plastic components. Imagine a toothbrush without plastic! For that matter, imagine a hospital without plastic! There are some things we can't do without until an inexpensive alternative happens along.
We have to start where we can, and general consensus means single-use plastic bags have to go. It's the first step in a long pilgrimage to a more-or-less plastic-free destination. Bon voyage!