plastic ..evil necessity

So the fight goes on

but I wonder if its going too far...

an article in the Guardian caught my eye about Marks & Spencer in the UK, they are now going to sell fruit and veg loose, so you can pick and choose your own and put it in a paper bag...

Heres a link to the article - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/16/marks-spencer-selling-loose-fruit-veg-plastic-waste

While the idea of loose fruit and veg is good...didnt we stop using paper because there was just too many trees being sacrificed?

will this initiative just come back and bite us in the ass because we are now using too MUCH paper and wooden things to counter all the plastic use?

There has to be a happy medium somewhere out there.

I like the idea of loose fruit and veg, I dont like the idea of plastic bags (in Singapore there are rolls of single use plastic bags available everywhere in supermarkets) and paper bags that people will start using to put the loose produce in.  

The idea to shun everything plastic and start on wood and paper is frightening... its not practical. what has to change is the throw away mentality, the single use mentality.  What we should be aiming for is to stop take away plastic containers, stop cling film, stop packaging everything in plastic.

Singapore is not doing its part to recycle or raise awareness in the use, disposal and recycling of plastic.  We are very far away from thaking the step from plastic to brown bags.  Its shameful how we use so much single use plastic - this article in our national paper in July last year brought home the reality.  it was mind boggling how much we used and threw away. Heres a snippet from the article - 

"people in Singapore take 820 million plastic bags yearly from supermarkets.Only 2 per cent of these supermarket plastic bags were recycled by consumers. Two-thirds were used for the disposal of waste.The six-month SEC study, undertaken with the help of global consultancy Deloitte, also found that Singapore used 467 million polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles a year and 473 million plastic disposable items like takeaway containers.

Less than 20 per cent of these items are recycled. The study did not include plastic bags given out by places other than supermarkets." Read the whole article - link below

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-goes-through-167-billion-plastic-items-a-year-recycles-less-than-20-per-cent-of

So where is the happy medium? How we do we achieve a balance?

How do we refrain from using plastic but not swing so far the other way that the trees are obliterated from the face of the earth..