FOE, as it was called for short, taught me lots of things, but what most sticks in my mind was the campaign against excess packaging. In those days, it was framed within the context of reducing litter and general waste rather then in terms of cutting greenhouse gases and stopping climate change. Still, the modus operandi was the same -- to start the ball rolling by refusing to accept plastic bags and other pointless packaging in shops.Sometimes it amazes me to realize that, more than 30 years on, that battle still hasn't been completely won even in Britain, although most of the supermarkets do now offer “life-long” carrier bags, and shopkeepers rarely look askance if you refuse plastic bags. There are also recycling schemes, sometimes reinforced with penalties for not using them, everywhere. There's even one town somewhere in Devon where the shops have been persuaded to abandon carrier bags completely.
What has any of that got to do with Turkey? Well, I've decided that I must embark on the same thankless task of rejecting plastic bags here in my 50s as I did in the UK in my 20s. “İstemiyorum (I don't want it),” I say now whenever I get a chance to stop someone in mid-wrap. Sometimes I even muster up “Ambalaja gerek yok (the packaging isn't necessary),” if there aren't too many people in the queue behind me.
The reaction is usually much the same as I remember in the past: namely, a look of withering contempt for someone who doesn't understand the vital necessity of concealing her purchases from jealous eyes. Occasionally, however, it does at least spark some sort of argument-cum-conversation, which I suppose is partly the point of it all -- to get people thinking about plastic bags filling the grass medians and nesting in the trees that we now know are also contributing to the slow heating up of the globe. There are a few encouraging signs. The upscale Macro Centers, for example, have started offering reusable carrier bags just like Sainsbury's and Tesco in the UK. And I know quite a few people who have picked up those same reusable bags on trips home so that they can use them over here, too. Small steps, but it was the same in my youth, and everything has to start somewhere.
As for the recycling, that still has some way to go unfortunately. It was a rude awakening in my hometown of Göreme to spot the refuse collectors gathering up the contents of our recycling bins and tossing them into the same garbage truck as the other refuse. And in İstanbul, I still can't quite get used to throwing my bottles and newspapers out with the tins and potato peelings, there being no recycling containers anywhere near where I'm staying.
Give it a few more years, though, and no doubt we'll be seeing the same mind-blowingly complicated recycling procedures as my mother now has to cope with in London. And then I'll probably be complaining about that too!
Charlotte McPherson is away. Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
