Bags of Plastic

I must apologise for the subject matter which I write about; the environment. It seems that you cannot open a newspaper nowadays without being faced with a story  or five reminding us, the consumers, that we running out of natural resources like Eastenders is running out of decent storylines.

At a time where we should be conserving the little that we have, why is it that every time I go to the convenience store the shop assistant thinks it’s convenient to put my purchases in a plastic bag?

 Don’t get me wrong, I can understand the need for a bag when I have purchased many things, but when I go into the shop gasping for breath with sweat dripping from my chin to buy a bottle of water, it should be pretty damn obvious that I don’t need a bag!

 Is this nation that I live in obsessed with packaging? Is it really necessary for me to wrestle through four layers of plastic just to obtain a morsel of food?

And wait a minute! It doesn’t just stop at plastic bags. No. No. No. It seems that for every drink I buy from my local 7 Eleven, they want to give me between seven and eleven straws. Is that where they get their name from?

I’m a middle-aged man that is quite capable of finding my mouth without the aide of a hollow tube of plastic. Perhaps in thirty years time when the arthritis has taken over and I cannot remember if my surname is Samson or Senile, I’ll welcome the mandatory straws, but for now NO THANK YOU!

As a regular patron you would think that the shop assistants would have learnt by now that I don’t want a plastic bag, I don’t want a straw and I don’t want my receipt. All that I do want is for a change policy so that plastic is not needlessly wasted.

 The solution is simple, “Would you like a plastic bag Sir?”

 “No thank you!”