Hari tanpa beg plastik: Have you ever look at your local lake/river/drain recently?

So I was in Tesco the other day, doing the usual stuff (buying things, of course), life is pretty good until I arrived in front of the cashier, it was pretty normal at first but then, I realize that the cashier didn’t gave me any plastic bags, so I asked her “kak, where plastic bag?” which she then replied “Hari ni hari tanpa beg plastik” which I then said to myself “Oh damn, I forgot”. “Hari tanpa beg plastik”, what the hell is that? Well for those of you don’t know what it means; it is that a couple of our government’s decision-makers have lost their minds. I mean think about it, what are they trying to archive? To see our rivers freed for plastic bags? To make sure that we wouldn't cause global warming? The only thing that this “Hari tanpa beg plastik” campaign does is making people feel stupid carrying a bunch of bag-less groceries like they’d just shoplifted it.

Let me tell you one thing, If you’ve found a river (in Malaysia) that is full of plastic bags and you’re trying to blame someone for it, don’t blame it on the Plastic bag’s manufacturers, blame it on the people, why, because plastic bags didn’t throw itself into the river, we did. And if someone in the government's office wants something to be done (and by “something” I mean trying to stop people from using plastic bags), here’s an Idea, ban all plastic bags and use this instead;

Now, was that so hard? don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that this will change everything, as the matter of fact, this’ll change nothing, let me give you an example, have you ever look at your local lake/river/drain recently? how many plastic bags did you see? I’m guessing a lot, now, other than plastic bags, what else did you see? I’m guessing slippers, diapers, plastic wrappers, tires, sofas, etc etc. In short, we Malaysians throw pretty much everything into our river system, do you really think that banning or replacing plastic bags will make a difference? Hell no. If you (the government) really-really want us Malaysians to change, be harsh to the minor offenders, we need to be more like the Singaporeans, even then I don’t think much will change, we Malaysians are barbaric rather than civilized when it comes to cleanliness, and that’s the fact that we (and of course the government) need to accept. Trying to reduce the use of plastic bags is a good try, but sadly, I think this too, is a losing battle.