Whenever I wave off a plastic bag at 7/11, the clerks regard my refusal with a bemused wonderment.

“Farang bah.” 

I get a cloned response from witness to my pathetic attempts to clear the beach of plastic bags.”

“Farang bah. Phunee talay ja hai hai thongs plastic eck”

They are right.

The tide reaps the beach another harvest of petroleum-based bottles, wrappings, and bags, but few people can remember paper bags or banana-leaf wrappings. Plastic bags are an essential asset to the consumer culture. Essence sniffers huff glue from the micro-thin plastic bags and the rest of us use them for trash. No much else you can do with them.

Certainly no good as condoms.

Not that I tried, but they too thin for anything else, so certain nations have reacted to the growing mountains of discarded plastic bags as well as the floaters straying across the countryside like tenacleless octopii by the billions.

China has joined Bhutan, Bangladesh, San Francisco and 30 Eskimo villages in Alaska by banning stores from dispensing free plastic bags to their customers, which the Chinese refer as ‘white pollution’.

A billion Chinese times 5 bags per day is a lot of bags. 

But no one here seems to be aware of their detrimental effect on the environment. Most Thais think the plastic bags disappear into thin air after they hit the kiat or trash.

At least the Thais don’t utilize the plastic bags as pot-a-san’.

My friend Tim who lived in Kenya for years described the roadside as a gauntlet of rotting plastic bags with excreta.

Yikes.

Not a pretty sight so cheers to China for seeing the future.

No plastic bags.

Calculate your carbon footprint at this URL

http://www.itint.co.uk/hpisurvey/

For a related article click on this URL

https://www.mangozeen.com/save-the-world-and-pattaya-too-2.htm