The Cost of Convenience

Packing for a trip, in my toiletries pouch, I put in small bottles of shampoo and body wash and moisturiser. They are mid-sized bottles of the same branded bottles I have stacked on my shelf at home. Generally, in the hotels one stays at, we see mini versions of the same—shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, face wash, and so on. If the mid-sized bottles seem big for a weekend trip, then we can get sachets at any nearby supermarket or corner store. It is not unusual to find shops around bus terminals and railway stations in India strung with garlands of sachets. These single-use sachets could be priced anywhere between one to five rupees. It is affordable and accessible to have products at any cost range and in any quantity as per our needs.Then we can do a similar exercise for our food and snacks too. A colleague and I were on the road between two different meetings. We felt like having a quick snack, but nothing greasy. So we walked to the nearest store and got a small box of cut fruit. Again, it is not uncommon to see packaged and sealed boxes of fruits diced into easily consumable pieces—papaya, watermelon, muskmelon, kiwi fruit and so on. Pomegranates are available, peeled. Pineapples in neat discs. Cool! Here’s a healthy alternative, we don’t have to resort to chips and other fried food in packets, we thought. The fruit boxes come in plastic cases, with a small fruit fork. Quick and handy for those of us pressed with other tasks.On another occasion, while I was craving for something sweet to have after my meal, I thought a small piece of peanut candy (chikki) should do the trick. So, I hopped to the shop across the street and got a packet of fifty small pieces, priced at an affordable eighty rupees. No big deal. Icecreams start at ten rupees and Indian sweet dishes around thirty rupees apiece, like a ladoo. Rasmalais come in tiny plastic containers at a minimum of sixty rupees. It’s not about the money here, but how I can get single pieces of any dish I want. Nonetheless, I bought the chikki packets and shared them with my colleagues. This was healthier (had comparatively more protein) and contained fewer calories, I thought..But here’s the deal with whatever easily affordable, accessible and consumable thing I have bought in the past few weeks, nay months, or even years. Sure, they are packaged in small, individual, hygienic cases. But they are also so much more wrapped in plastic and non-biodegradable packaging. Here, I was forced to ask, what is the cost of convenience?When my grandpa used to purchase peanut chikkis from the nearby store, occasionally, they would come wrapped in paper bundles, tied with a coir string. I am sure most of us have come across such packaging. Similarly, the fruit vendors, pushing their fresh produce on a cart, would slice out whatever portions we want from bigger fruits like papaya, jackfruits, watermelon and pineapple, and we would get them home in baskets and vessels that could be reused a hundred times over. Yet, my healthier, well-portioned options today are invariably stuffed in plastic cases.I never touch the mini-toiletries at hotels, not because I have any brand loyalty, but it is just a few more pieces of single-use plastic which is going into some bin or landfill. Sadly, most of our local governments haven’t yet evolved efficient waste-segregation and management solutions so that we can afford to have more and more items in plastic packaging. Yet we do. I have seen videos of how similarly tiny packaged items in Japan are neatly sorted when discarded. We somehow aren’t yet sensitised enough to carry our wrappers and plastic cases to the nearest bin. The bins are, too, overflowing with both wet and dry waste in a stinking mess.Should my convenience have such a huge footprint on the planet? No. At least to whatever extent I can afford to. Maybe getting a whole fruit over the weekend and chopping it for my consumption during the week could be a more time-consuming but less damaging activity. Similarly, choosing to carry empty containers to pick up food could cut down on delivery boxes. I am still trying to find a balance between green and on-the-go. Maybe, collective conscious choices could slowly change consumer behaviour.

The Cost of Convenience

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