I've seen that, Mag! It's great. I think its still on Netflix.

With the right approach, many local restaurants will be willing to take free containers. They'll be happy to save a few kuais at the expense of their customers' health. The plastic used in bottles and take-away containers don't use the same chemicals. Some leak more cancerous chemicals after the first use. So, when giving those cheap plastic containers away, you might want to include free doses of pomegranate juice, flaxseeds, broccoli and an appointment to the physician for male users.

How do you say "I'll have some chemo-therapy with that...", in Putonghua??

Low cost one use plastic containers are meant to be used once. After being used they are, like or not, trash. I would prefer not having my food served in trash containers dug out of foul places, posible rinsed with polluted water and handled by trash pickers with no sense of sanitation.

I recycle, separate my trash and am aware of the current state of pollution in China. Reusing plastic trash thinking it to be more healthy than recycling it, boggles.

Well, i have learned a lot today about plastic. I watched the full documentary and when it was at the last minute i realized that i have a plastic lip piercing wearing it for the last 10 years (not the same one but always plastic). I am lucky somehow because if i ever want to have a kid i wouldn't dear to bring a biological kid.

To be honest i was not thinking about humans health at all. I was more focused on the phisical trash on earth...

怎么了！？

Shyam, according to what you said about the poor people. Yes, that would be in the actual political situation based on economy. That's why i said, it is another topic. I completly understand your point...but oh well. Thanks that i was borned in a kind of OK european country and i got an education blah blah and is not me the one that is doing that job (just being sarcastic).

Then what do i do with this containers and my piercing? LOL I will think of it tomorrow... good night.

There's nothing wrong with your attitude, Jon. The only point I was making was that the more people who can win, the more successful any movement can be. It's better to give people incentives to do right, than to force right upon them.

This is one of the things I've admired in many European nations, when it came to recycling. The leaders and people understood the full, simultaneous impact to the environment and the economy. Whereas, in other parts of the world (including my country), recycling is often seen as a separate, added, artificial annoyance. This isn't even restricted to the developed world. I just spent several weeks in Mumbai, India and I was utterly shocked by the total lack of interest in recycling and sanitation control...and I was in an industrialized area of the city.

I wish i could do something about it.

Everyday my trash is full of stupid plastic... Is not even normal. i must take the rubbish once a day.

Yesterday i bought some buiscuits in a random shop and if there were 12 buiscuits... the all were wrapped in their indiviual plastic folder. I regret buying it... but how on earth is this posible? It is just too much.

In a county of the Basque Country a new recycling system is going on right now. It is compulsory to recycle or you get a fine. Somehow we have understood there is some stuff to be done about it (although i would push polititians to lower down the plastic use) and in the future is gonna be similar in other Countries ( i guess ).

I must admit there is a lot of controversy with all this recycling sistem and there was a big buzz about it.

Hey Jon,

You'll like this:

www.cnn.com/[...]

I friend of mine who works for a big U.S. food processor says this is something that his industry is seriously pursuing. In addition to reducing trash and saving energy, it could also dramatically reduce production costs. (An example of the win-win-win concept I described.)

Then again, efforts like this can backfire, too. About 20 years ago, they tried to develop an edible packing material that could replace styro-foam "peanuts", out of potato starch. It looked promising, until someone realized that they provided food for mice and rats. They did eventually invent a version that was made from potato starch, but had all of the flavor and nutritional elements removed. While this still enabled it to dissolve in a landfill, it also meant that it was no longer edible. :)

A lot of stuff you can buy in bulk in Carrefour, even cookies, or loose at the bakers.
The cookies in the baker shop may seem expensive, but they are big. Gram for gram I reckon they could be comparable. A lot of these pre-packed cookies are small, and actually work out very expensive, in more ways than one.
Unless you specifically want Oreo Cookies etc. You can also look for other generic items and squeezing the pack will tell you how full/empty the box is.
The other solution, is get a mini oven and bake your own cookies, which is pretty easy. The only other equipment you need is a mixing bowl and a large spoon.

Seriously, I got so tired of not knowing what I was eating, not being able to get what I wanted, poor quality food, or over paying, I took up some cooking again. Also a nice hobby.

I tend to use the "Tupperware" as a generic term too, meaning any sort of plastic container with a plastic lid that seals tightly. The difference here can be that real Tupperware, if it is even really real, sells in these little specialty shops and can cost as much as 100 RMB for a medium sized bowl. Guess you can blame on the "middle man" again. The stuff you get cheap in the local grocery stores for 5 or 10 RMB obviously are not the same things. And I have had those products break in my hand while washing them off. Plastic in China is really of a poor quality.

I have come to learn too that Chinese people are not as receptive to being given 2nd hand goods, like clothes or household supplies, the way we are in the west. They can even see it as a bit of an insult. Strange but true.

As far as the so called recycling enterprises go I guess it is all done with the best of intentions, but I have watched the school Ai Yis (little aunties who go the cleaning jobs) throw the boxes visibly marked marked recycle in English and Chinese right in with the garbage and move on to the next collection. Well, I guess just having the boxes is seen as a beginning here.

We tended to just neatly stack up our things like that outside the trash bins in our old school and somebody would gather them up. They were almost always gone within a half hour. I always hoped they went to good use.