最近、食品の保存にタッパーを使わなくなりました。
キッチンの収納庫にも、冷蔵庫にも、ガラス瓶が並んでいます。
ガラス瓶、意外なほど便利なんです。
電子レンジもオーブンも食洗機もOKで、お値段もリーズナブル。残り物も、タッパーに入れるよりも味落ちも少ないし、長持ちします。
そして、なによりeco-friendly
環境にやさしいは、大事。
何か自分にやれることをやっていきたいもの。
そう考えるようになったのは、あるおじいさんとの出会いから。
そんな思い出を久しぶりに英語で書いてみました。
皆が寝静まった深夜にひたすら英語を書く
それが楽しくて、ついつい、長くなってしまいました
よろしかったら、お読みくださいね。
Is it possible to live without plastic?
This is the question which I asked myself very often.
Our life in Japan is full of plastic.
100 hundred yen shops sell various kinds of plastic containers, some are for single use and others for multiple use even though they are not durable enough.
We think they are OK as long as they are cheap.
If one breaks, we only have to buy another one.
It’s quite easy.
But..
Is it really OK?
I started to live in the United States with my family more than twenty years ago.
New life there was full of plastic.
In the supermarkets, packs of plastic bags like Ziploc and plastic containers for food were everywhere.
Toy stores had many kinds of giant-sized plastic toys.
Children loved to play with very splecial plastic kitchens, tall plastic slides, and plastic playhouses big enough for them to live in, maybe for emergency.
Girls or boys at registers at any shop used to say to us, "Paper or plastic?"
When we chose plastic, they gave us a dozen of plastic bags every time.
That was how I got used to life with plastic.
Many years have passed and things are different even in the United States.
People worry that plastic is harmful to sea creatures.
Plastic shopping bags are banned and plastic straws might disappear very soon.
I visited Honolulu five times in these two years and found it difficult to get plastic things there.
I saw many wooden toys instead of plastic toys at toy stores and many of them were small.
People carry shopping bags with them when they go shopping.
No plastic bags at registers.
One day I was surprised to see an old man walking down a street carrying a heavy-looking old paper bag full of food very carefully.
He was reusing a paper shopping bag!
It never happened in the United States where I used to live.
None of us did or do the same thing in Japan, either.
He looked very natural.
He just chose to change his way to make our world a better place, maybe.
I thought I learned something very important from him.
It is of no meaning to discuss the possibility to live without plastic and it is everyone’s own problem, not others’.
We don’t need anyone to do something together.
What every one of us thinks and acts matters.
If everyone does what one can do every day, it will make a difference.