Wednesday 4 April 2007

Plastic Bags

15th century explorers named this island "Flores" after the profusion of wild flowers they found. By the same principle, a 21st century explorer landing here would have to call this island "Plastic Bags".

I believe that in some countries (Switzerland?) plastic bags are being taxed out of existence due to their eco-unfriendliness. But not here on Flores - maybe it's because the environment is just so pristine, no-one has yet woken up to the threat of the plastic bag (if indeed there is one).

ANYWAY (as my late father used to say), the plastic bags given out by the island's oldest "General Merchant" (as we would say in UK English), Boaventura Ramos & Ca. Lda. (est. 1926) have a super map of Flores on them.

Here it is:-


Wait a minute! Now that I look at this, that's not nearly as good a map as BV's bags used to have on them!

Excuse me for a bit while I investigate ...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thought you might be interested to learn that the San Francisco, California, Board of Supervisors recently voted 10-1 to outlaw non-recyclable plastic bags. You can read the news article in the SF Chronicle at:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/27/BAG1ROSLSG4.DTL

Epicyclic said...

Eco-Entertainment & Serious

Many supermarkets in California still give the customer the option of "paper or plastic?". When asked I've been known to put the responsibility directly on the store employee(bagger). I do this with a very serious face then tell the bagger it's your choice.... "Kill a tree or choke a sea gull" The responses vary, but are always amusing!!!!

The phrase Kill a tree choke a sea gull/seal probably originated in the state of Oregon.

Years ago Californians emigrated en masse to Oregon after soiling their own nest.

Where does a Florentino go?

Corvo?

boa noite,

Bob

Neil King said...

Bob

Interesting you should say about choking a sea gull.

Where I come from (Scotland) I was told many years ago that a carelessly discarded plastic bag could choke a cow. This was before the era of "eco-correctness", it was farmers protecting their assets.

When I made my comment about the plastic bags chasing the seagulls, I just meant they were billowing around in the wind with the gulls!

Ate a logo

Neil

Epicyclic said...

Neil,

Choking internally (ingestion) seems to be the cause of death for some types of marine life.
http://www.coastal.ca.gov/publiced/marinedebris.html

Unfortunately other envirormental concerns might need our attention before the plastic bags.

"Plastic Bags" Island, Azores, PT 9960

Flores sounds so much better!

Talk again.

Bob