international day without plastic bags

Anyone who knows me even a bit knows that one thing I hate are plastic bags. If a person reuses them, for example to make a lamp, that's great, but we all know that way too many plastic bags get loose, harming the environment and animals. Last month we spent a week in Taganga, on the Caribbean Sea in Colombia, while they were doing some public construction work on the streets. Digging holes near the shore they uncovered a layer of trash, mostly plastic bags, squashed between layers of soil that have built up over the years. All this plastic was pretty far down, not at all at the surface, so we can surmise that it had been there for quite a few years, but it hadn't decomposed even a bit. It was just a bit ripped up.

I read in the Italian newspaper la Repubblica that the 12th of September will be the first international day without plastic bags, meaning consumers should refrain from accepting stores' plastic bags, using instead washable bags or already used bags. Hoping that people realize that it's not at all difficult and they continue to do so. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

Guess what else I found in those holes in the street in Colombia? A flip-flop, like new despite all those years it had been buried. Poor little guy...if only he could've had a happier ending....