The moment I stepped off my middle seat on Cathay Pacific long-haul flight from San Francisco to Bangalore to take a break I was astonished at the amount of plastic consumption. As I stood near the food service area a steady stream of my fellow passengers most of them of Indian Orgin were pouring by. They wanted an orange jiuice or an apple juice or just plain water. Some of them had plastic cups in they hands they were eager to dispose off and get more clean plastic cups. I was starting to become aware of the enormous use of plastic cups on the flight. I was making mental calculation of the number of cups we would have used. 500 passengers at 15 or so cups per person. The Indian Culture which had historically been a green and sustainable one was already transformed.

How was it green before you may ask. .I thought about that question.  I will try to contrast what people would do before with what they were doing now. There seldom was the need to use throwaway plastic items like a a spoon when your fingers could handle the job. Paper or Plastic plates were not necessary, a nice banana leaf.was sufficient and it degraded well or even better would be a good meal for a cow or a goat.

The Plastic Bag Revolution
It was common for people to go to the market with resuable cloth bags. These days seldom do you see people doing that. They walk empty handed and shop at the super market. Even the small street fruit hawker has a good pile of plastic bags to peddle.

My dad had called to me to get him a couple of items from Bangalore. I went to his favorite store, Nilgiris. I only picked up a couple of items. I politely refused the paper bag they were eager to put those items in. As I checked out of the store, the young lady who was by the door cried in surprise "plastic bag togalise sir". I told her that I already had one which my earlier store visit had peddled to me. Toomba Chickdu sir, dodadu togali sir, she exclaimed. I was thinking if she got paid by how many plastic bags she moved. I shoved the couple of items that I purchased into that little plastic bag and was on my way. I paid attention to my fellow shoppers, none of them were carrying cloth bags and they were eager to get their groceries doubled bagged in good old plastic.

A person next to me had 4 1/2 liter bags of Nilgiris milk and 2 1/4 liter bags of Nilgiris curd. All in plastic. How would this have worked before? The milkman would come on his bicycle carefully balacning two bigs cans of milk. He would give a shout out. Someone from the family would rush out with a stainless steel utensil. No plastic ever came into the distribution. One of the savign grace with the advent of plasti was, the elders would carefully perserve the plastic milk bags cleaning them to sell it for recycling.

The Sharing Experience

Thiis time around I decided to do put myself in the mdidle of an experiment to avoid getting any plastic items into my hand. Not to buy any plastic water bottles or to take plastic bags and to take more sustainable and shared (trains, buses) forms of transportation.

Right at the airport I chose the Airport Bus which costed only Rs 125 for the 40 min ride from the Airport to the City compared to an individual A/C Taxi that costs Rs 800. Buses in Bangalore are always very Unfortunately very few people took the bus, there were only 4 of us on the bus and I wondered if it was really sustainable. I got chatting with a fellow passanger and told him of how I had made arrangement to get a home connection from the bus stop. He was travelling the same way and wanted to know if he could ride with me. Excited about the prospect of getting  We got to the bus stop. The bus driver made multiple calls for our home connection.

As I travelled on the train, I chose to not use A/C. My ticket to Mysore was a mere Rs 52. I even wondered if the price was sustainable. The moment I got into the train it was very well populated. It felt every bit sustainable.

The Food Distribution

I was here for more surpsies, my fellow passanger decided to buy some rice dish from the caterer. The caterer duly gave
each of them a plastic spoon, to my amazement, they threw the plastic spoon right out of the window and decided to eat
the food the old fashioned sustainable way with their hand. It dawned on my the double whammy, not only were they consuming the plastic spoon (by throwing it away) but they were also consuming water to wash their hand. The transformation of the no-green was complete