Some of you heard of the single use plastic ban that has been enforced in Bali lately.

And a lot of you asked me: but is this actually respected?

Well, first of all, it’s been months that most of the supermarket won’t give a plastic bag, and offer to buy a fabric-made bag instead.

And it’s interesting to see how it actually has zero negative impact on the buyers experience.

We just now have to think about bringing our own bag, or we spend a few cents to buy one that won’t end up choking turtles in the ocean.

Then, I just ordered food using a local app called Go-Jek, that everybody use here.

When the food arrived, the driver apologised: “sorry sir, we can’t use plastic bags anymore, we just have a paper bag”

It made my day.

It’s crazy to see how we could just have done that for years, at little to no cost at all, but we had to wait for millions of marine mammals to choke in our shit, to start waking up.

I deeply hope that this one more small step, is leading us towards a more sustainable path for everybody, on this planet.

We can’t change anything we’ve done wrong in the past, it’s already done.

But we can be part of the change that needs to happen, and for this, we can all do our own bit.

I want to use this post to say a big THANK YOU to Melati (17 yo) and Isabel (15 yo) at Bye Bye Plastic Bags for raising a huge amount of awareness around the issue, and to Bali’s governor, Wayan Koster, for actually making the needed change, happens.

I hope I’ll meet you all in person one day!

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Pic by @thelifeofjord