Environment & beauty
Following similar initiatives in other countries, a ban on free plastic bags is being considered in Romania. In other words, the free distribution of plastic bags in supermarkets is targeted. I have to admit I fell for it instantly, without even reading the alternatives proposed or the modality through which such a ban might be pulled through. On a second thought, I have to ‘congratulate’ myself for my idealism! :) My initial reaction was based on the assumption that people will stop using plastic bags, hence ‘Oh joy’ for the environment! Should we rather call it naïveté? :) Wouldn’t that be nice if it were that simple?! Clearly, beyond the price that they will ask for plastic bags – which by no means can be as high as to constitute a serious disincentive for the big majority of people – education and handy-cheap-green alternatives are the other two ingredients that might make this campaign successful (don’t ask me to define success, Bush cannot do it, Cheney either…) and the environment a tiny bit happier. Did I mention education? Just to make sure: education!!!
& beauty...
Shortly after the revolution in Romania – before/after the revolution is my personal Before Christ/Anno Domini time scale – I went to Austria for the summer. My first time outside the still grey Romania. Once there, I frenetically collected plastic bags; I remember I brought a tone of such colorful bags back home. There was nothing more chic and stirred more envy than going 'shopping' at the bakery around the corner with such a 'cool' plastic bag. A sort of unofficial beauty contest was going, who has the coolest plastic bag from dincolo (that means literally beyond/on the other side and is to be understood as abroad). Fascination for plastic bags; everyone was collecting them and repudiating the ‘old’ bags made out of fabric. And then I just gave them up at one point. And it hit me years later, while watching this, that in my mind plastic bags were symbols of the West and fabric ones of the grey communism. And yes I stopped dancing with the plastic bags because I had stopped believing in this symbolism.
