Dozens of nylon bags waiting to be used by consumers.

Plastic bags have long been something that is very familiar to the life of people. They appear everywhere on the streets, in shops both big and small, at the markets, and inside the supermarkets. In daily life however, these nylon bags are being overused and used unnecessarily.

At a food street stall on Nguyen Oanh Road (Go Vap District, HCM City), DTiNews saw hundreds of different size plastic bags being used to keep rice, soup and even fish sauce. Everything was pre-packed to meet the demand of consumers during peak hours. For one portion of food here, at least 10 plastic bags are used; one for rice, one for plastic spoon, one for chopsticks, soup, fish sauce, meat juice, fresh vegetables, etc.

The owner of this street stall shared that everyday, they sell more than 100 portions of food and use more than 5kg of plastic bags and other plastic items. She said it is very common and anywhere we go, we could find the same thing.

At Huan’s grocery shop in Tan Binh District, plastic bags are hung right in front of the shop to make it convenient for buyers to use. The owner said, “Everyday my shop uses about 3kg's of plastic bags. I want to limit the use of these bags, but it’s very difficult. No one is going to buy things from my shop if there’s no bag.”

Many people are aware of the damaging effect plastic bags have on the environment. Unfortunately, this has not had much of an impact on peoples habits when they go out shopping for food. Plastic bags have become an essential thing in their everyday life.

Plastic bags are used for everything from food to drinks.

Nguyen Thi Van, from Tan Phu District, said that in an effort to reduce her use of plastic bags, she had bought 2 reusable bags. However if she was not mistaken, the two bags were never even used once. She said she often goes shopping without planning beforehand which would make it very hard to avoid using plastic bags.

Nguyen Thi Thanh, a bank worker from District One shared, “I always have take-away food for lunch. Everything is packed in plastic bags. Everyone knows that it is bad but no one really cares. No one has died from eating food out of the plastic bags!”

(Dan Tri, 20/3/2010)