The story of plastic bags

The other day, while giving a friend a ride home, as they parted ways at a small alley, her friend turned away, and she turned her car around, about to speed off. Suddenly, she wanted to look back at her friend, and to her surprise: her friend was bending down, picking up scattered plastic bags and neatly putting them into a nearby trash can. That day, a feeling of affection filled her all the way home, and the story about the plastic bags didn't end there.

Once, while accompanying a volunteer group to A Lưới, we received nearly three hundred gift packages containing essential goods. Everyone discussed putting each package into a large plastic bag. A friend suggested buying biodegradable bags from the supermarket. She explained that while distributing the gifts, they could promote the habit of reducing plastic bag use, and the locals would have bags for other purposes – a win-win situation. Thankfully, when the villagers arrived to receive the gifts, most were carrying baskets on their shoulders and happily chatting with each other: "From now on, we have these beautiful bags to carry to the market! They can hold a lot of things and are lightweight too!"

Another friend, who is relatively well -off and owns a homestay right in the city center, always washes and carefully dries the plastic bags she uses after shopping. Not only that, she even encourages her school-aged daughter to help her. Once everything is done, she neatly folds them and gives them to vendors at the market who can reuse the plastic bags.

Every day, she has to use a lot of plastic bags for her sales, even though the price of packaging is constantly increasing. Each time she buys bags, compared to the small profit she makes, she feels really bad about it. But she can't do otherwise because of the need for convenience. Although she occasionally tries to save money, most customers are dissatisfied despite her repeated explanations: that bringing so many bags back just wastes time disposing of them, that it's for environmental protection, etc.

Her family grew many fig and banana trees. She remembers that when she was little, she used to climb the trees to pick fig leaves and banana leaves, roll them into bundles, and carry them to the market to sell. Her customers were mainly the market vendors. It wasn't much money, but it was enough to help cover her school expenses. Back then, there were no plastic bags, so people wrapped everything they sold in fig and banana leaves, from sticky rice and noodles to vegetables and meat. Every morning, you could tell they were going to the market just by seeing the women carrying their baskets. Food wrapped in fig and banana leaves wasn't as convenient as food in plastic bags, but it was certainly safer and didn't harm the environment.

Unlike today's hectic and fast-paced life, sometimes people would stop by at lunchtime or in the afternoon after work to pick up their purchases packed in plastic bags. Once, when I went with my father to the fields to clear land for planting cassava, he had to stop occasionally to remove plastic bags stuck to the hoe blade – bags that had been lying silently underground for years without decomposing. Then he would put them all into a basket. Now, remembering that, I sometimes shudder at the thought of how millions of people still habitually use plastic bags every day, every second, and the news I read daily about the terrible environmental damage caused by humans. It's as terrible as the story of a whale found dead on the Philippine coast, heartbreakingly containing 40kg of various plastic bags in its stomach. Before dying, it showed signs of dehydration, hunger, and vomiting blood.

These past few days, she's been genuinely happy to see customers coming to buy things from her shop every day. They only receive a single plastic bag, and instead of putting the item in a reusable plastic bag with handles, some put it directly into their bicycle basket, while others put it in their own reusable plastic basket. On those occasions, she not only thanks them for buying from her, but also expresses her gratitude in more detail. She secretly hopes that the story of plastic bags will have a beautiful ending when everyone becomes more mindful in their daily habits. She understands that she, too, is a key contributor to the green message for the environment around her.

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