Bye bye Plastic....

When I got married, my mom in law gifted me a lot of steel containers. I was really feeling weird about why steel?

Anyways, things went on and then she would cook something nice and send it to us. Everything that was given to us was in a steel container. She had the biggest to the smallest boxes of steel. The biggest to the smallest steel pans with steel lids on it.

I still remember I used to just use dishes or plates to cover my pans and my mom in law painstakingly got the exact covers to each of the pans which didn't have a cover. And I was always left to wonder what is it with steel when everything is so easily available in plastic.

Many times, I thought it was just about the generation gap and laughed away to it. I appreciated the efforts that she put in the kitchen and the containers. She never told me to stop storing food in plastic containers. She always modeled it for me.

Whenever I would ask my father in law to get something from the market, he would very systematically pull out the cotton bag which he would carry without fail. I would always tell him its ok, that bag is not needed but it was a good habit that he had developed and continues to follow even today.

And then I saw a lot of amlas and wanted to make a nice pickle out of them. I asked my mom in law and she had the glass and the ceramic (barni) containers for them too. And I still thought that it was a generation gap. We can store the pickle in plastic too. The companies sell it to us in plastic containers after all........

My mom used to insist that we should drink water from a mud filter (mudka) and I again felt that it is just about the generation gap. When so many newer water purifiers are available, then why mudka????? I left it there...

And then, I have been bombarded with information with people and experts I am meeting every single day. And the main things that I get to learn from these experts is what my parents and in-laws have been teaching me.
Use steel to store food.
Use madkas for water.
Use ceramic containers for pickle

And there is research showing how plastic is harmful...

And I have been ignoring my elders under the pretext of “being modern” and “generation gap” not realizing the immense wisdom that they have always been showering upon me for free.....

Or maybe I am the sandwich generation between my child and my in-laws that things are making more sense...

Whatever it is, I am saying bye bye to plastic containers and also to plastic bags...