The Attack of The Killer Plastic

My mom was doing her seasonal summer ‘spring cleaning’, the neat freak that she is. The other morning she opened a cupboard as a mountain of plastic bags tumbled out – in all shapes and sizes, in all the gaudy colours of a circus flag. She shook her head, exasperated.

Recycling family as we are, we like to keep our plastic bags instead of tossing them into the wind, as some people do, looking at the skies of Bahrain. We reuse them and then eventually recycle them if necessary. But sometimes, the fancy flashy bags that stores hand you are made of mixed material that cannot be separated and cannot be recycled. Hence, the plastic bag treasure trove in our house.

So, sitting around the bags, watching them hopelessly and rather clueless, we had no idea what to do with them.

Plastic bags are quite useless once they’re done carrying our load; they suffocate animals and fish, clog up everything and don’t match anything you wear.

The reason why these infuriating plastic bags choke up everything around us is because for every little thing you buy, the shop gives you a plastic bag to carry it. Even if you buy say, a loaf of bread that is comfortably wrapped in a wad of plastic already, that you could easily just carry home, in hand, they give you a plastic bag to put it in. If you fill your plastic bag too much and it’s too heavy, they put it in another three plastic bags to prevent spillage. And if they’re just feeling generous, for the ten bags you’ve already filled with their merchandise, they’ll ‘generously’ hand over five more for being such a ‘loyal’ customer.

Will the madness never end?!

It was with relief that I heard of the jute/paper bag revolution started up by one of the larger hypermarkets in Bahrain. Tough bags for a few fils that could probably carry double the amount that a normal flimsy plastic bag could.

And yet, there appears to be only a handful of these macho bags making there way to stores to stock up on groceries or whatsoever you like to buy on your weekly outings.

The 300 fils jute bags couldn’t stand the competition from the ever free plastic ones, yet the former stays for life while the latter splits by the time you’re at the escalator.

Other countries around the world have embraced the paper bag concept, like the US, or the recycling/returning bags-for-shopping-credit concept, like the UK and India. Louis Vitton and various other high-end luxury brands marketed jute bags that became the it-bag for a season because they looked that good. Yet in Bahrain, there continues to be a waterfall of these irksome bags cascading never-endlessly, multiplying faster than bunnies.

TESCO's Plastic Bag Point System!

The 'It' Bag!

              
So, needless to say, with no means of recycling our plastic-mixed-with-mysterious-material bags, they went back into the cupboard, folded neatly, saved for a rainy day. Well, who knows, with the rate the Artic ice sheets are melting, maybe we’ll use our bags to construct a raft and keep afloat and live through global warming.

Divide and Conquer!

I hear you groaning about sorting out the trash when recycling.
I agree it's a onerous, rather messy, task.
So why not make life easier and create separate compartments in your bin corresponding to each kind of recyclable group?
Or why not just use different bins for each category?

These are the recycling bins from Mr.DC's form class, the blue paper bin not in the picture.

It's simple, efficient and cheap! - So, please decide to sort your rubbish rather than dumping it all in together.

Because everything you recycle, helps sustain our existence.

What goes around, always comes around! :) 

Paradise Lost - Diminishing Dilmun

Fireworks illuminated Orlando’s skies as the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened its winged-boar-flanked gates to magic-adoring muggles. It was a magnificent evening with frogs croaking the chorus to the Hogwarts school song.
However just a few hundred miles away, the atmosphere was saturated with dread and panic as the seas churned in agony. A slick black oil cover has been enveloping the Gulf of Mexico in what has been dubbed the ‘world’s worst environmental disaster’. Pictures of mutilated seagulls and suffocated fish have littered newspapers and websites, spurring nausea and growing global terror. The Deepwater Horizon Spill, or more commonly known as the BP oil spill, has put into perspective the massive damage humans are impacting on the environment and yet, once again, defenseless animals have taken the toll for our misdoings.

The earth is literally bleeding as the cold tortured black of the oil has morphed into blood-curdling red, as marine animals choke and suffer a painful, unnatural death.

Though not on such a massive scale, oil spills and other manmade hazards have been lethally scarring the earth for years now.

We are so oblivious to our life-threatening actions that we are unaware of the consequences and repercussions that follow. Every plastic bottle we use, every plastic ring, every Styrofoam cup, every polythene bag hurts the environment in some way.

There are some things not even magic can solve.

Recycling may seem like a hippie trend to you – a fad that people may enjoy – but it really isn’t. It’s nearly, or maybe even more essential, to saving the world’s resources and environment than solar panels or fancy new biofuels.

Bahrain has had its share of environmental disasters – the Tubli Bay horror, for example – to take the matter seriously. The colourful bins that dot the sidewalks are not merely relief from the long vast stretches of barren sand – they serve a crucial role in propelling Bahrain into a greener, friendlier environment and keeping the bigger picture in mind, they help sustain future generations.

A short walk to your nearest bin on a random Friday to empty your overflowing exclusive plastic collection bin can go a long way.

It’s not preaching – It’s a reminder. A reminder for Bahrain – to wake up and join the green movement, to curb its wasteful ways and become renewable and efficient. Because we want people to remember Bahrain for the ages – as the Lost Paradise it has always been.

Earth's Very Own Hour

We were trudging through what appeared to be the middle of the desert, squinting through the dust haze, with dogs trotting by our sides. The blurred vicinity resembled little more than a wasteland with lumps of plastic bags skimming the scarred ground, buffeted by the wind.An eight year old boy walking with us in silence dutifully squatted down every few minutes or so and picked up a scrap of recyclable material that lay abandoned in the middle of nowhere.By the end of the walk however, the boy was laden with a box full of things that could be easily sorted and recycled for future use.I was rather startled looking into the carton; bottles, cardboard, paper and an array of other things had been procured from what I had imagined was a scarcely inhabited area.Sure, the boy would have gone home and dropped his collection into one of Bahrain’s set of brilliantly coloured recycling bins. But if he could fill a box with litter from a relatively empty lot of land, what could we fill with the litter that lines the pavements of Bahrain and mars its natural beauty?

Recently, the World celebrated the ‘Earth Hour’ with participants plunging themselves into darkness for an hour. It was a worldwide message raising awareness about the amount of electricity we waste and how much more we can conserve. We experimented with Earth Hour at our house and to our surprise we realized the large number of hardly necessary lights that were switched on regularly.It cannot be denied that Bahrain itself uses a colossal amount of electricity to keep the Kingdom alive and whizzing with life. If you’ve ever just sat out on your porch at night and leaned back and gazed into the heavens above, you would have realized that hardly any stars twinkle back at you. Instead, you stare into a cloudless, murky purple sky, with the glow of city lights and football floodlights dotting the horizon.

The World may not crumble into oblivion in 2012 or be conquered by zealous aliens with webbed fingers and green antennae but the Earth is undoubtedly dying, unable to cope with our profligate ways. We can’t boycott electricity or eradicate Styrofoam, but we can help, maybe by recycling all the papers we accumulated in the past academic year or walking to the shop at the corner - Small gestures to improve the grand scheme of things. So take shorter showers and save the world!

The Green Machine

St.Christopher's Environmental Club, christened 'The Green Machine' comprises a group of students united with a common passion for the environment and a drive to heal our ailing planet.
We are striving towards a better future; one that is not fraught with oil spills, plastic-strewn oceans and an envelope of toxic fumes.
Our contribution may be small - but we know, that in the greater scheme of things, we are pooling into a larger pitcher, lending a helping hand and making a difference.

The Green Machine is just representative of the hundreds of student groups, activists and non-profit organisations that are part of the Global conglomeration fighting for a change in our lethal ways that are scarring the environment.

We're looking at the bigger, brighter picture.
We may be just teenagers.
But we're spearheading life-saving Change.