Take a shopping bag to go shopping - in response to Prem's blog

Prem opened an interesting topic.
Prem http://www.facebook.com/prem.pandurangam?ref=nf
His blog post http://mpprem.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/shop-with-a-shopping-bag/

I sometimes accidentally end up cleaning the fridge and I know how much rotten stuff there is to throw out. If we can shop more often like my dad used to do, there wasn't much more than a maximum of 2 days worth of perishable food products at home.

When we go on holiday, especially driving, we carry a bag to collect all the unbelievably large volume of trash we produce on the way, so as not to drop them all over the route, and so that we bring back to the city to dispose hoping that the city has better ways to dispose these - unfortunately there is no source segregation and safe disposal methods anyway anywhere.

We go on holiday to beautiful places and we see trash littered all over - the worst of the trash varieties is the used plastic bag.

Once many years ago I read a commentary on the 12 year Kumbh Mela event that happens in Allahabad - the journalist commented he was astounded by the huge mass of humanity assembled in one place on one day - and even more astounded by the trash they generated - but above all he was most astounded at the bio-degradable nature of the trash that was generated - plates made of leaves, cups made of clay, etc etc. I wonder how it will be now.

We are a nation of contradictions. We worship trees, rivers and mountains. But we are the most irresponsible in cutting down trees and polluting rivers and deforesting mountains. But we also are very caring when it comes to leaving old trees in the middle of city roads, building huge apartment complexes on plots with old trees but trying to preserve at least some of them around.

When we used to drive around the USofA, we used to come across signs in the nature parks: "Leave nothing behind. Take nothing with you but memories"
This has strongly got imprinted into my consciousness. I think it is something that all of us should strive to achieve when we visit nature parks and monuments and heritage sites.

Bala