Bucket o’Blood

Yes! It’s Pixie’s annual Hallowe’en themed column. Only this year, I couldn’t muster any amusing thoughts about wicked, shiny costumes and the mayhem principle (Penny Woolcock’s gut-busting film Mischief Night has the latter covered. End of).

Hang on; maybe the wicked, shiny costumes do have a place in this here column. Tomb Raider black PVC, build-your-own Eowyn armour, Edward’s dollar store cutlery hands… my past costumes do have a certain element in common.

Plastic.

Lovely, shiny, smooth, glossy, bendy, shell-like, reflective, disposable, everywhere plastic. Invisible because it’s so commonplace. It’s like the air of the 21^st century. How many times a day do your hands touch plastic? Mine are moving over (metal-look) plastic keys right now. I’ve got a plastic beaker of water (can’t be trusted with glass), a plastic-cased portable phone, cutlery with plastic handles… OK, red plastic with bubbles. Irresistible.

That’s what credit cards are for, right? Those moments of “Want. Take. Have” (with the added “pay for then shriek in agony when bill arrives” that Slayer powers allow you to skip over ;). Shiny shiny, and into the bag it goes.

Then begins the ritual denuding: plastic shrinkwrap, plastic container, plastic tags, plastic twists. All squeaking against each other as you crush them into the bin. And feel bad, but – hey – the council doesn’t recycle plastic, so what to do?

The final ritual gesture, of course: stuff in the plastic bag into a plastic bag full of plastic bags that live in the cupboard under the sink. They do get reused for the next round of shopping, and I seem to have a loop on repeat telling shop assistants not to give me a plastic bag. Yet somehow, there they are, and there are so many of them. Maybe they’re breeding in there?

Something, I decide, must be done. Order must be imposed on chaos. Balm must be applied to the bleeding wound of liberal guilt. Perhaps I could imitate the splendid crew at the Women’s Institute, who had a Day of Action in which they took 1000s of plastic bags back to the supermarkets that handed them out. Some people have those canvas sausage things that hang on the wall and look like something to do with macramé. Instead, I have the monstrous mountain, quivering and shedding, that attacks every time I have to get cleaning materials (all Ecover, phew).

Plastic kinda is the monster in the cupboard, trailing its long, drycleaning wrapper tail out as I go to sleep counting carbon footprints. The world is like that dumb video that Wes Bentley’s character – heavily eyebrowed so we know he’s a pained artiste – makes in American Beauty, with its lonely plastic bag cavorting in the name of teenage angst.

But that’s Hollywood crap, when what we want is Slayage, people! Research, research, research: how can the beast be slain? I hit upon the Willow-like solution of taming the beast by carefully folding each bag in quarters, and taking all the folded bags to our local organic shop, who put them out for customers to reuse. I arrived with my tidy bag full of folded bags, as requested, and the customer assistant said, “Great, thanks. That should last us out this afternoon.”

At that point, I have to say, I had a moment of flum. Sadly, she didn’t take my open mouth as a sign to administer a delicious vegan, gluten-free Mocha-Choco cake, so I went on my merry (or rather, stood and looked at the cakes) and wondered about the flummishness. Simple, really: when I was wading (literally at one point) through my bagmonster, I thought that I had the EU plastic bag mountain, a truly horrible fountain of oil-byproduct gore. And it turns out that, actually, I had one smallish plastic bag full of folded bags that will last less than a day at a shop that’s about the size of a streetcar shelter. Customers there must love them a crinkly plastic bag as much as I love Mocha-Choco cake. Which is even more amazing, as I would feel too guilty to go to the Haelan Centre unhemped up, and preferably with extra canvas bag just in case.

Suddenly my wicked Wiccan solution of peace and lovingkindness and the friendly huh! of seeing someone in London carrying a preloved Big Carrot bag seemed insufficient. As I had plunged my hands into the bag o’bags, I had the queasy sensation that it was a bag of blood. Soft, shiny, liquid death pouring over my hands in a disturbing Ronette Pulasky engine oil way that fast became, well, literal.

Blood of Nigeria spilt by Shell. Blood of Alaska spilt by Exxon. Blood of Iraq spilt by the US/UK forces and their shell company Halliburton.

There are other small, glowy solutions of fits and starts. I wrote a draft of this column with a pencil that proclaims that it used to be a plastic cup and I have a matching (pink!) ballpoint that used to be a computer printer (both from w). A growing number of companies use recycled industrial plastics to make everything from shower curtains to shoes. Shopping trolleys are no longer just for grannies.

But the bag of solutions should be fuller. Maybe this Hallowe’en it should be the supermarkets and drugstores who sell plastic masks, plastic costumes, plastic boxes of candy, plastic face paints, plastic tombstones, plastic skeletons (you get the picture) who should get a trick played for all their treats. Bundle up all that Loblaws packaging, and take it back. Do it with five friends. Do it with ten. Do it with your whole high school. It’s not original, but good ideas are worth recycling if it means pulling our hands out of the bucket of blood.

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