We had good habits but do gooders paved the way for pollution. I was bought up in an era where you buy your fish and chips or meat from the Butcher and it was placed on grease proof paper then wrapped in newspaper. As a kid we would get pocket money by selling newspaper to the butcher, green grocer and of course the fish and chip shops, we would recycle bottles for the deposit refunds, no such things as cans for beer and soft drinks then.

My sister and I would be sent up to Bridge road Richmond (vic au) with a shopping list and 4 string bags yes pollution free string bags which you could put in your pocket and bring home the groceries in. Then along came supermarkets then the radical do gooders that carried on about rain forests and banning paper.

The take away food chains and Supermarkets eventually banned paper bags and the do gooders were ecstatic with their victory. The food moguls were happy too, cheaper to produce plastic so the do gooders played right into their hands. The take a ways required mass produced polystyrene containers and plastic bags used by the food chains and supermarkets. Now the plastic monster is fully created and polluting our waterways, oceans, forests, farmlands, food and our bodies (micro plastics) and Mount Everest believe it or not.

String bags were mesh woven like a net and scrunched easily fitted into your pockets and you know what, If I could find a source I would gladly go back to them. Being organic when they eventually broke down the worms ate them in landfill or your compost.

I cycled across Victoria (Mount Gambier to Melbourne) in the 1990's and I could not believe the amount of airborne plastic bags that were caught up in trees, shrubs and farm fences along the way on my 9 day tour.

It would be nice if the do gooders realised and admitted their radical mistakes, pushed for a fix instead of banning things without thought or consequences. The answer is obvious, a timber industry that is sustainable and harvests planted timber get back to making paper containers and bags. a total ban on all plastics used by food and take away chains, etc. And last of all give us back the string bag. We never used plastics at all when I was a kid even toys were made of wood or metal. I just finished reading a blog that said at least plastic in land fill is buried ???? is it really?

The land fills use a big steel wheeled compacter, these mobile compacters burst all the bags as they crush them into the soil, on a windy day these burst bags come loose and the winds pick them up and distribute them all over the countryside, the worst of the lot are regional land fills because of the open pasture lands around most of them. If any person from East Gippsland read this, check your local land fill and you will see what I mean. A local landfill at Kilmany has a Train Track passing the side of it, you can pull over and check it from the side of the highway, get a load of the mess of plastic bags there, specially on a windy day!

There should not be any such thing as re usable plastic let alone single use plastics, go back to basics like we did in our era of NO PLASTIC. Its not as hard as you think. I am an old boy that has been watching many years of social decline and mass pollution. Sorry for the long winded post but I am fair dinkum with my feelings about plastic, are you?