Allow me to share an unexpected development that arose for me when I earnestly heeded the call and used my own reusable bags for all my grocery shopping.

I found, to my surprise and amusement, that I very quickly ran out of plastic bags to bag my home refuse. They are indispensable in disposing of wet, organic/food waste in particular.

It is necessary in our hot and humid weather to bag refuse for the sake of public cleanliness and health, lest the pest populations increase with all sorts of putrid, rotting trash spilling out of rubbish chutes. We should also bag our refuse out of consideration to the cleaners, whose lowly-paid jobs are unpleasant enough.

Are we to buy plastic bags just to use once for throwing away rubbish in? That seems utterly wasteful.

In countries like New Zealand, home kitchen sinks can have 'in-sink-nerators', which are installed in the sink outlets. The user puts food waste into the hole, and the gadget grinds the waste finely, which is then flushed away.

Other home owners can turn organic waste into compost in their gardens. Alternatively, organic waste is bagged for refuse collection, as with non-organic waste.

An overwhelming proportion of our population lives in high-rise dwellings, and so have to use the rubbish chute system. Recycling bins are located only in selected areas. Moreover, the fixed size of our chutes (mine measures just 36cm x 24cm) dictates that only small and medium-sized bags can go through the chutes.

Definitely, the large, black garbage bag cannot be used by high-rise dwellers, although fewer of them would have needed to be used because each bag holds a greater volume of trash than regular supermarket plastic bags.

I still try to minimise taking more store plastic bags than my purchases need, and when a dry purchase is small enough to be carried in my handbag, I decline a store bag. Sometimes I use my own reusable shopping bags too.

In our drive to be environmentally-friendly, let us not forget the mundane and easily-overlooked, but still necessary, role plastic bags play in our current rubbish disposal system. Public cleanliness and health needs are important, too. Moderation is the key.

Selena Goh Kim Choo (Ms)