Banana Trees’ Revenge
Photo: Fruitnet.com
- Lim Tola
- November 30, 2019 4:56 AM
As the Cambodian government is working on a sub-decree to ban all single-use plastic items—bags, dishes, straws—can’t you hear banana trees having a good laugh in the countryside?
And can’t you hear Nature as a whole laughing like crazy with them. They’re laughing their heads off in bamboo bushes, they guffaw in lotus ponds while palm trees tickling the clouds are in stitches and sniggers ooze from the depths of the forests.
One must admit that it’s not every day that nature can have fun considering what that two-legged creature with a thinking head makes it eat and breathe every day: from toxic gas, pesticides and herbicides to heavy metals, nuclear waste and genetically-modified organisms.
And there is plastic, kilos of plastic, tons of plastic, millions of tons of plastic in all shades, shapes, consistency, hard, soft or adhesive.
Disgusting, suffocating, indigestible. Deadly.
There was a time not that long ago when, in Cambodia, for wrappings, containers or kitchen utensils, people would turn to Nature, would borrow a few banana leaves, bamboo stalks or coconut shells to use as dishes before throwing them in the rice fields where everything was recycled.
Then came modern times. Chemicals times. Plastic times. The hell with banana leaves, bamboo stalks, coconut shells.
I plastic, you plastic, he plastics, we plastic, you plastic, they plastic. Anytime, anywhere, anything. Till nausea, asphyxia.
Until Nature could not take it anymore and, above all, that people themselves could not take it anymore. Because Man thinks of himself first. Always.
Then comes a sub-decree that sub-decrees the banishment of single-use plastics. Nature breathes.
And in the countryside, banana trees, bamboo bushes and coconut trees enjoy their revenge.
Can’t you hear them laugh at us?!?
