plastic: boon or bane?

my parents were school teachers and every year about this time, they used to get some show of appreciation for their tireless efforts in molding the minds of the future, usually in the form of pens funded collectively by their students. black, shiny, fountain pens, i loved those pens.

my dad had one that he used for signing important documents like my report cards and petition for donation. we were not to touch the pen, it was his. sometimes he let us practice our cursive writing with it, that was exciting, our writing looked so adult-ish. he used the pen for many years, replacing the ink by suction from the bottle into the pen when it dryed up or was finished, but never the pen.

during my years as a journalist, i got at least one pen a day. it was the practice to supply pen, stamped with your company's logo, in the press kits. one pen every day. they were not particularly special, plastic and impersonal. once in a while you get one with a funky design, but not too often. now i can remember one that i liked from Air Asia. i most probably had more than a couple of hundreds of pens at one time, if i bothered to take care of and keep them. i did not. easy come, easy go. i most probably lost them the very next day.

during my year in communication last year, instead of the usual pen for the press, i ordered stamped soap. i thought it would last for more than a day. it was odd, but useful.

yesterday, after so long since i left journalism more than 2 years ago, i got a pen in the informational kit for shah alam's civic amenity proposal. six months of poring through documents on the waste streams and the dilema of disposal - plastic included - gave me a new appreciation of the pen.

while jotting down the minute for the the first meeting of the stakeholders , it hit me - no one replaces the ink anymore these days. it's much easier to just get another pen. cheaper. not so messy either, i still remember my dad's blue pocket on his white shirt. this pen is red and its lifespan is short. here today, gone tomorrow, probably to the landfills judging by Malaysia's habit of not recycling. pah! it's just a small pen, what recycle, ey?

plastic has made a lot of things more accessible to many - cheaper, less complicated solution to yesterday's sophistication. but it also makes it a tad too easy.

i believe by its virtue, plastic killed motainai.