Ah, the GREEN 80's!

I was born in the mid 70's in an average-income Indian family. My parents, and grandparents were government employees. Throughout their life, they stuck to one organization and retired with full pension benefits.

We were not rich but we could afford occasional indulgences. A family dinner outing would be one such event. Thanks to the absence of restaurant and cuisine-choices, we had to make peace with simple and frugal dining experiences. The fact that someone else is cooking and serving your food was incentive enough for the entire family.

My father owned a scooter and my grandfather owned a bicycle. Both vehicles could seat only 2 including the driver. I was half-ticket, so I could be accommodated on the front-frame-bar of the bicycle or the foot-rest of the scooter to make things work. There were no-group transportation options like cabs. The best option was an auto-rickshaw if two adults were willing to half-seat next to the driver.

So we walked. We walked to the places that we wanted to visit. Conversely our world was set up at walking distance from our house. Be it grocery shopping, fresh produce shopping, entertainment or visiting a doctor - walking was the way to get there.

I was also born in a house that had, in the name of modern electronic appliances, a single grand-father radio. I call it grand-father radio for two reasons. One - it belonged to my grand-father and two - much like my grandfather, it lived on it's terms.

Tuning into an AM or FM station would call for fine motor skills on the part of the user. I was the "chosen one" for carrying out this very important task. Whenever I hit the right frequency, the world around us stopped. Everyone had only one task from here on - listen to the content coming out of the radio.

Then came the TV.

It was black & white picture and came with its own box and closing shutters. Like visitors coming in to see and bless a new-born baby - some 35 neighbors poured into our house to see our latest acquisition. The radio was palpably jealous.

TV programming would be relayed for about 2 hours per day. 60 minutes was reserved for NEWS in Hindi and English. The TV now dictated our time-table. Dinner time was adjusted to coincide with TV-time. Sleeping time was synchronized with end of the day's programming.

Life was simple. We made the best of what we had. Compared to current times, a vital element was conspicuously missing from our lives.

Plastic.

Yes, Plastic. Our world did not include plastic. It is hard to imagine the absence of plastic, given how we are submerged in an ocean of products made with plastic. Let me tell you how, and, by telling so, hope for a future, that would do an encore of the 80's.

Let us start with food packaging. One word - Newspaper. Yes, old newspapers were default packaging material for staples and groceries. You visit a "kirana" store, ask for 2 kgs of sugar, and wait for the packaging maestro get to work.

With a swift rotational movement of his hands, he would pick up a newspaper and turn it into a cone. Holding the cone with one hand he would fill it up with the sugar. He would shut-close the cone and tie the package with a thin cotton thread. Your pack is ready to be picked up.

We carried cotton or jute bags when we went shopping. Our purchase would typically comprise of cone-packaging of various sizes. Now, the cone cannot hold the product for a long time. It was good only for the travel time between the store and home.

Every shopping trip would call for a mandatory follow-up activity. Emptying the cones into steel-containers. Much like the radio-tuning job, it was my responsibility to bring the containers from the kitchen to the unpacking area. Depending on the weight of the container, or sometimes the value of goods in the container, I would or wouldn't be trusted with replacing the containers to its original position.

What about the newspapers.? The newspapers were never torn open. The cotton thread was carefully unwound. The cone would be gently opened and the contents emptied into a container. The somewhat disfigured newspaper would be gently hand-pressed and folded into a rectangular shape. The cotton thread would be wound around a ball of cotton thread that kept getting fatter with every shopping trip.

The stack of packaging-newspapers gets merged with the subscribed stack of newspapers. Once the stack reaches about 2 feet in height - its time to call the "raddi-wala". "Raddi" referred to typically paper-refuse, "wala" is the guy who collected it. The raddi-wala would typically visit the neighborhood on weekends. He would weigh the stack of old newspapers and pay us something in return. He would also collect/buy glass bottles and steel items for a price.

Every once in a while the raddi-wala would be handed a plastic item, that somehow found a way into the house. Without a second thought and with utter disdain, he would throw it aside and refuse to accept it. That was one more reason for not going "plastic" on everything. The raddi-wala won't accept it.

So, we did shopping, filled the containers, and recycled the last bit of packaging paper. What about the cotton thread that was used to secure the newspaper cone. In comes "jugaad" - the great Indian Innovation machinery at work. Turns out the cotton threads made excellent wicks. They were used to light lamps during prayers. Come Diwali and the thread-wicks collected through the year would be consumed in one go.

As you might have realized by now - we left no trace elements waiting to decompose. Beverages were sold in glass bottles. The 80s were all about Campa-cola and Gold-Spot. Coke and Pepsi were unheard of. If you wanted to carry the beverage home, the shopkeeper would charge you an additional rupee. He wants you to return the bottle so he can send it back to the refilling plant. We preferred to consume the beverage at the shop to avoid the one-rupee mortgage transaction.

Milk came in glass bottles too. We returned empty bottles at the milk-depot and picked up equal number of filled bottles. You could not buy milk all through the day. The milk supply business happened in the wee hours of the morning. You walked to the nearby milk depot, deposited your empty bottles and collected the filled ones.

The bottles did not have plastic caps. Instead they had tin foil caps. Once the cap came off the bottle, it cannot be reused. Well, it cannot be reused for capping the milk bottle, but the Indian Jugaad took care of it. The tin foil cap joined forces with another natural product to become the ultimate utensil cleaning accessory.

Thrust the tin foil cap into a wrist-full of coconut-shell fiber and you have the ultimate cleaning product to eliminate the toughest stains. There were no chemical based cleaning soaps. Disinfection was achieved by combining the ingenious cleaning scrub with wood-ash to make the most potent cleaning combination ever.

The tin foil cap would eventually wear off and would be completely consumed. The coconut shell fiber was easily replaceable. Wood ash was mostly available. Clay brick dust made up for absence of wood-ash. Absence of milk bottle tin foil cap was made up by other household items. Toothpastes came in tin tubes. Medicinal tablets came in tin blister packaging. All of them saw the end of life as cleaning accessories.

Our household produced zero-waste. What would you do with old used clothes? Discard, donate, destroy? We had a system for that too. In place of raddi-wala, came the "bartan-wala". Bartan is Hindi for utensils. He had the most peculiar business model. I could never understand how it worked.

He would collect old clothes from you and, instead of paying cash, he would compensate you with a kitchen utensil. The quality of the exchange-utensil depended upon the quality and volume of clothes you put up for exchange. This barter system would turn out to be a great game of haggling. Saturday afternoons would be consumed by how our family was able to haggle a prime piece of utensil for our refused clothes.

It worked, and it left zero impact on the environment. What about shoes? There were two kinds of shoes - canvas and leather. Our school required us to wear leather shoes on weekdays and canvas shoes on Saturdays. Every locality had a "mochi" - a cobbler, who has complete knowledge of the footwear in your household. For growing kids, parents would often purchase a +1 size shoe. It lasted a minimum of 3 academic years. Any wear and tear would be handled by the mochi.

When the shoe reached end-of-life, the bad news would be conveyed to you by the mochi. He sees no possibility of repair. There isn't any material left to stick and stitch. What do we do now.?

For his years of loyal service, the mochi gets to keep the worn out shoe. He cuts out the reusable parts of the shoe and uses it as spares. He recycles the lace and uses part of the leather or canvas for other applications - like patching torn vehicle seat covers, or patching an umbrella etc.

When we are not in school, we wore slippers. Americans know it as flip-flops. One rubber base with a rubber sling holding on to your feet. When you put it to heavy use, like playing cricket or football, the rubber sling would often dislodge from its position. We did not throw the slipper to buy a new one. It was time for Jugaad. The safety-pin was invented for this very purpose. Push the sling back into position and hold it with a safety pin. It won't dislodge until the safety-pin has fought the battle till its last breath. When that fails, visit the mochi.

What happened to the food waste? Simple. It went into the soil and became compost. We did not separate dry-waste and wet-waste. Back in the 80s - there was no waste. Every article in the house served us diligently till end of life. It went back to where it came from.

Fast forward 30 years. None of this story is relatable to the current generation. We are raising a batch that has replaced use-and-reuse with use-and-throw. The "throwing" is where the problem starts. Where you throw, how you throw and what happens after you throw, will determine how the planet will treat you in the coming decades.

Sometimes I wonder why the 80s lifestyle cannot be re-introduced. What can we, as consumers, do, to reverse this very dangerous trend ? We are spoilt with choices. As consumers we have a duty towards our environment. There are great ideas out there on how we can live a more "green" life.

All it takes is your willingness to play the game.