Ever looked at decomposed material in a plastic bag? It’s sand that is all that it is. With no trace of what it previously was—your favourite chocolate, milk, or prosciutto (vacuum packed, sealed, and imported from Italy)—except from what is still visible on the packaging.
Packaged food contributes to our experience of pleasure and our habit of convenience (packaged food is not about hunger or nutrition, so please let us not justify our greed), and what remains of it merges with sand. But plastic fills the sea, unable to decompose (or to swim), carried by the waves onto the shore, lodged in sand, and trapped between rocks. Many hands come together to dislodge it, gather it, and send it away to be buried in landfills. Still, there is always more.
Will it ever be completely clean? Not till the spewing stops. While we do things to cut the flow—consciously reduce our pleasure-seeking habits, carry our own bamboo straws, bottles, and bags—there is a lot that is already circulating that needs to be removed from the sea and the shore. We can’t protect the soil from landfills, and the air from incinerated plastic (not yet), but we can clean up the shoreline, with hope that the ocean will be free of plastic waste, and the sand will have ripples and patterns once again.
We can get those gloves on, or we can request Amazon for no air-fillers, and plastic in our packaging, especially where there is no risk of damage.
Email Amazon’s customer service team at cs-reply@amazon.com (International), or cs-reply@amazon.in (India) and make a request for an option to choose plastic-free packaging before you confirm an order. They are open to suggestions and feedback.
Here’s an example email you can use asking Amazon to add the feature.
Hi,
My name is _________. The email address attached to my Amazon account is __________.
I am requesting that Amazon add a feature that gives me the option to choose plastic-free packaging before confirming an order.
Thank you.
