Bags

I live in Rwanda now, but I used to live in Vietnam. Of course, Rwanda and Vietnam are totally different. But what perhaps strikes me most, are the plastic bags. Or rather, the absence of bags.

In recent years, many countries have taken all kinds of measures to ban single-use bags, just to reduce plastics and promote more sustainable bags. I remember how in South Africa, the bags at the checkout were made sturdier and paid for in order to reduce the amount of plastic in the litter. But even now, you see the "flowers of Africa" everywhere: bags hanging in the barbed wire of fences, flapping in the wind.

In Belgium, too, people are trying to reduce the amount of plastic. The fruit and vegetable departments of supermarkets have switched from the thin bags to reusable, cloth or paper bags. But still, when visiting Belgium, it strikes me how much plastic is still in circulation, how many fruit and vegetables are pre-packed in plastic.

That is less the case in Vietnam. Fruit and vegetables are not pre-packed. And yet, for me, Vietnam is the king of plastic bags. Everything you buy is immediately put into a bag by the sales person, preferably more than one because they are so thin that they immediately tear. They come in all sizes. There are even special bags with which you can hang a take-away coffee or juice (in a plastic cup with a plastic straw, of course) on the handlebar of your scooter. Plastic, there is plastic everywhere. The habit of just dropping litter doesn't really help. The street sweepers fight an almost impossible battle. In the end, all that plastic ends up in the sea. On a bad day, you are not harassed by jellyfish in the sea, but by plastic bags. It is a nasty feeling, those slimy, dirty things sliding along your body in the otherwise glorious seawater.

No, that is something of the past here in Rwanda. Plastic bags are banned in Rwanda. It is a measure with which Rwanda scores very high on the international ranking for banning plastic. And so all your purchases are packed in paper bags. No "Flowers of Africa" here. This also has to do with the responsibility that each neighbourhood takes to clean up. In pre-COVID times, this was done on the monthly "umuganda" day where everyone does community work. Kigali is a very clean city.

There is no plastic in the shops, but there is paper. Everything, whatever you buy, must be in a bag. As much as I had to insist in Vietnam, that I had my own reusable bags, I have to do the same here. At least, that gives me something familiar in this new country.😊