What our plastic-less society will look like
Everyone has started saying goodbye to the use of plastics due to environmental reasons, which have overtaken the convenience factor. New alternatives like betel tree leaf boxes are emerging. Banana leaves are going to be used extensively in packaging food items in restaurants. People may have to carry utensils for receiving food when buying them as ‘parcel’.
We should not be surprised if we see people carrying five or six stainless steel tiffin deck-carrier sets having a spoon lock as in the yesteryears, with their initials inscribed on the sides.
Enterprising utensil-makers will now create new shapes and designs and think up convenience features for such carriers very soon for bulk production. Also as the hunt for plastic items like bottles goes on, the old style goojas may stage a comeback in new forms. Made with all kinds of metals ranging from silver brass to stainless steel, they were a regular companion decades ago for long-distance travellers, sometimes seeming to indicate one’s social status. There was a provision to keep tumblers inside the pot-shaped goojas that had screwable lids.
They were replaced by temperature-maintaining plastic bottles and stainless steel flasks of different shapes, colours and sizes. Some were exorbitantly priced at first, but soon became affordable to the middle class.
A minor digression: People who were conscious of fashion might soon be compelled to use their own holdall bedding during long-distance travel in high-class, air-conditioned train coaches. We regularly come across complaints of poor hygiene and railway contractor-supplied, bug-infested pillows and bedding on trains. Such self-reliant holdall beds carried by passengers (many of them increasingly rely on radio taxis to commute to railway stations and hence have no transport problems) will serve many purposes and eliminate packing worries at the last minute. The only possibly unpleasant consequence could be an altercation between passengers in pushing their holdall luggage underneath their seats. Design changes could be put in place to use them on the berths in our modern train compartments.
We will find that ideas from the days of our forefathers will emerge in the near future, to design and develop items to replace plastic. Incidentally, I have a neighbour whose retinue specialises in smashing dozens of closed plastic water bottles every day, annoying everyone all around. The disturbance will hopefully come to an end soon with the ban on plastic bottles.
R Swaminathan
Email: swamynathan55@rediffmail.com