Earth Friendly

Today I'm sharing with you my earth friendly habit that I practise. No I am not an environmentalist. I am just naturally earth friendly. Plus I really really hate plastic bags! And if there is one thing I am very proud of my state of Penang in Malaysia, it is that it is the first state in Malaysia that stop issuing plastic bags in supermarket. It is such an easy thing to do to stop using plastic bags that I sometimes wonder why people don't do it more often, or why people are resistant to change. My bag of choice is actually cloth bags like the one shown above.

I actually use cloth bags for everything! I have a bunch of them hanging in my kitchen. I use them for marketing, for shopping, for bringing my lunch to work. I also use them for gym, to carry my clean clothes to the gym, and carry my dirty clothes back. And they are so convenient cause I can throw them in the washing machine and just wash and reuse them. They never tear! Heck, I even make my own! You can see them here and how I got started with all this.

If you are in Penang market, the seller would usually wrap your produce in newspaper. But in Singapore, for some reason they wrap everything in plastic. So above is actually the view of my vegetable drawer in the fridge. Everything is wrapped! And the amazing thing is, if you buy these from the market, they will put it in more plastic bags for your ease of carry. So I've been just carrying them home in my cloth bags. I don't even like the plastic they come in, but since they are already pre-packed, I'm ok with it, I guess.

One of the thing I love about my wet market egg seller is, they wrap your egg in these cardboard looking egg carrier. I love these although they tend to take up a lot of space in my bag. You can also keep the carried and bring it back with you the next time you need to refill your eggs. So environmentally friendly!

And this weekend was the first time I started using glass container to carry my meat back. We have lots of these glass container at home which I use for my office bento. Now we bring them to the market to buy meat in. The seller was ok with it, so I guess I'll use this method more often. I have a big round one too which I think I'll start using to buy my weekly fixed of Mala Fragrant Pot! They charge me SGD0.30 for the take away container which I always throw away after just one use! Interestingly, people in Penang have been using these type of carried, and sometimes even thermos carrier whenever they go out and buy things. It is very common there, where tiffin is still used to buy dishes in. But in Singapore, people are so plastic crazy! Ugh. Hope they ban plastic here soon!