Plastic Bags

• Who remembers string bags?
• Into these, Israeli shoppers, like European housewives, put the produce they bought at the market.
• Fifteen or so years ago, Mahaneh Yehuda vendors laughed when presented with string bag or other reuseable carrier. "Yesh nylon!" the stallkeeper would say, pointing to the plantic bags with some indignation, as if the shopper had called him too primitive to do things the modern way.
• Now the Knesset is trying to pass a law requiring a charge (of more than 25 US cents at the current rate of exchange) for each plastic bag, "to encourage the use of reuseable bags."
• My string bags are long gone. No doubt I will soon find something similar in the shops. And, if we are fortunate, the vendors will expect me to have one, if I don't want to look like a primitive person who fills the landfills with disposables.

Copyright 2008 Jane S. Fox