I replied, " Yes, please"
My mother without knowledge of the aforesaid surcharge, helps herself out and puts all the grocery into plastic bags on her own. I assisted her to put all the grocery into plastic bags that she gleefully took from the counter while I was ignorant to the number of plastic she took.
"Sir, we will then charge you 40cent", said the cashier after counting the number of plastic bag we used to fill our grocery. "Okay" I replied.
Then only it hit me and I told my mom, " Oh shit, forgot to tell you they are charging 10cent per plastic bag" .
My mom face turns into utter shocking disbelief expression with her eyeballs ready to pop out from her eye once found out about the cut-throat surcharge and quickly seek my advise whether can we ask for 40 cent refund as she no longer wants the plastic bag anymore. I just shrug off her indecent proposal and claim that the cashier has already printed the receipt and its hard to reverse back of the amount paid.
A minor heated argument subsequently ensued between me and my mom along the way home when she throws a wobbler and accuses me being stupid ,foolish and wasteful when I have the chance to save money and I should have therefore saved them eventhough its mere 40 cent.
"Kids nowadays doesn't know how to treasure hard earned money.If everytime we shop for grocery and we incur unnecessary money for plastic bags whereas we could have avoid using them. You are really wasteful! 40 cent we can buy few sweets"
This irks me.
Suddenly she becomes so nature loving and understanding propagate the demand for our moral obligation to save the earth. Suggest that if everyone start doing their part our earth could have chance for survival
"Since when you're so passionate and care about the earth, you thrifty women", I complained to my myself in my heart.
Being principled me, I quickly fend off her irrational accusation and rebuke her melodramatic way at looking 40 cent as a grave wastage. I strongly disagree. (Kindly note, what I argued shall not take it to mean I'm against the campaign to save the nature)
I told my mom, "Look this 40 cent actually not that a great wastage at all as how you have perceived it should be. If you don't get the plastic bag here, what's our house gonna use to fill up our mini dustbin from? We can't afford not to use plastic bag at all. Somehow and somewhere at a certain point of time within our household necessity, we still need plastic bags. If we don't get it now then what would happen when our house runs out of plastic bags ? What are you going to fill our rubbish with? With those fancy RM1 paper bag?"
Mind you the plastic bag Carrefour sells are merely medium sized.
I continued, "You may buy the proper black rubbish bags for our big dustbin but what about all the smaller rubbish(unnecessary consumer goods) scattered all over our house?
Don't we ever need this smaller sized plastic bag to pack smaller rubbish up together so as to make the house tidier? It would later turn costly and incur unnecessary time and effort when you purposely make a trip out just to buy small plastic bag in order to pack up our smaller rubbish once you realise your house is out of smaller plastic bags.
Furthermore, this action would defeat you purpose to save the earth because you would then buy a set of plastic bag probably with 100 plys in it when you are only utilising few. Isn't that more wasteful? If you purchase one piece of plastic bag today , you could have save more now compared to buying a whole packet of plastic bags when you only utilise few leaving the rest untouched. Worst still if the untouched plastic bags later turns into a temptation for you to use it as you're afraid of wastages if you left it there after using 2 plys.
I don't think you could find any alternative smaller bag to wrap you those smaller rubbish(unnecessary consumer goods)other than small plastic bags.
In my personal view, what we could do in order to save the earth is not stop using plastic bag but instead use lesser plastic bag. Recycle your plastic bag. Don't simply throw your plastic bag. Keep them and use them again for necessity purposes.
If you're really that kiasu, I advise you next time go buy your grocery at supermarket that give out f.o.c plastic bag for instant Econsave!
You should look at this purchase at the bright side. Because you have bought it for 10cent hence you would treasure and value this piece of costly plastic bag better compared to your f.o.c plastic bag. When you treasure something, you will tend not to abuse its usage. Therefore it's value for money.
My mom finally concurs with my line of reasoning when I rationalise our earlier endeavour and said, " What we have wasted today is ONLY 20 cent not 40 cent as paranoidly suggested by you. We only need 2 plastic bag today but instead we took 2 more unnecessary plastic bag. So stop telling me we have wasted 40 cent. It's only 20 cent. I can give you back"
My mom was pacified thereof.
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