The Vietnamese Love Affair with Plastic

This morning, after four days of working, I decided that we were in dire need of some fresh fruit from the market, so after a nice chat with my mom on Skype, I headed out to the market, armed with my own cloth bag, determined to come home with a full stock of fruit sans a single plastic bags.

The Vietnamese love plastic bags. They use them for everything. Plastic bags for your plastic bags. Steven and I have attempted to refuse them at times trying to regain our environmental rejection of all things plastic, only to have them pressed upon us by an overzealous, plastic bag-loving Vietnamese. But winning a reusable shopping back from a promotional drive at our favorite grocery store last week that says "Protect the Environment" in both English and Vietnamese has rejuvenated our desire to be environmentally friendly and given us a small glimmer of hope for a plastic-bagless future in Viet Nam, even if in the far, far off future.

So this morning, I decided to take my conviction to the streets - my street to be specific.

As I was locking the door to our gate, I saw our one English-speaking neighbor, Mr. Manh, across the street with his grandson and stopped to chat for a few mintues. After making my way through the maze of alleys to our main alley, I ran into the xe om driver I have only used twice, but remains unfailingly friendly whenever I see him and received my usually friendly morning greeting. As I walked further down the street, I heard my name and turned to see The (pronounced "Tee"), our housing intermediary on his way to the market and we stopped and caught up on each other’s lives. When I left The, I made my way down to the fruit lady at the end of the alley and picked out nine small apples, put them in my bag, and handed them to the lady of the market, who proceeded to take them out and put them in a plastic bag until I stopped her and pantomimed that my bag was suitable and I wouldn't require another bag for my apples. She weighed them - exactly a kilo (fruit being my only frame of reference to what makes up a kilo) and asked for the 15,000 VND (or about 80 cents) price per kilo.

Proud of my first plastic-free purchase, I walked down another small alley, where I picked up four mangos for 15,000 VND and waived off yet another plastic bag. At the end of the alley, I said hello to the local cobbler who had recently fixed a few pairs of our shoes and received a wide grin in reply.

Coming back on onto our main alley, I spotted our regular banana man and wandered over, saying hello to him and the woman standing outside her front door to his right. I selected nice bunch and asked for half, paying 8,000 VND for about 10 bananas. As he went for a bag, I told him, “Khong Sau,” or no problem and went to place the bananas in my bag. Frantic that they would be squashed, he offered to cut them up, but I showed him that I could place them gently in the bag and they would be safe on my short walk home.

I walked away, proud of myself for this relatively small stand against plastic bags in Viet Nam.