Bring Your Own Bag - BYOB

It's been over two months since I left Bangalore and moved to the place of my birth, Coimbatore. Off the many positive differences I could see here, environmental awareness is surely not one of those. Administrators in Bangalore have prohibited the usage of plastic bags to a maximum extent. Almost every individual is aware of the fact that you can never visit a grocery shop or a supermarket hands-waving, if you are serious about buying things. This applies to all levels - from the fruit and flower vendor on the streets to the apparels stores in a shopping mall (or go for a paid recycled bag, which I don't have a great regard for). The message sent was so powerful such that massive fines were imposed on vendors, who continued to use plastic bags.

Not the case with us in Coimbatore. There have been countless articles, videos and posts about how detrimental plastic can be, how immortal plastic becomes when it comes into existence, what damage we are causing to ourselves and nature by relentlessly using them! Has it helped? I bet not.
It hurts me when I see the uncle going for a morning walk, returning with a pack of milk in a plastic carry bag. Likewise bread! I urge all of you to quietly keep the prestige away and carry these using your bare hands. It doesn't look awkward, trust me! If it does for you, carry your own bag made of cloth or any other bag you have at home, along when you go. My wife does it every time she goes out. Reduce the number of times we ask, "Oru cover kudunga, saar" (Give me a cover please, Sir).

These stores make very small profit margins and therefore they cannot afford to lose customers just because of their inability to say no. They cannot let their business get affected when their only 'fault' is they had a focus on the environment. I can narrate a true story to prove why this awareness can never be preached by the shopkeepers to us and why it should always be the other way round. My dad insisted "say no to carry bags" to a grocery shop owner friend of his, which was kindly obliged. Within a month he resumed the practice. With the number of options available, people had the liberty to ignore his shop and move on to the next one and get their jobs done. You can be a momentary winner when you do this but the environment loses out - the eventual losers are us. Because its we who are dependent on the environment while we always tend to (wrongly) think the vice versa is true. We have only spoken about plastic bags - the plastic spoons, water bottles, straws, containers, etc are equally as hazardous as the covers are. We haven't discussed pollution, natural resource abuse, deforestation and many more. All those are serious problems which require fixing with a combined effort from all.

But the one that is causing the heaviest downfall are the plastic bags, which according to me can be the first and easiest problem to tackle - with some amount of common sense. I sincerely request my fellow Coimbatoreans to get a little more eco-friendly and act sensibly! People in Bangalore did that so remarkably and offered less or zero resistance towards the move!

The next time you visit a supermarket, when you say  in the packing counter - "Don't use the plastic bag, I have my own bag", people will look at you skeptically. But that shouldn't really concern you since you are simply working towards the betterment of the planet. If one out of the 10 listeners learn, we are still successful!