Contain yourself

Contain yourself

Children usually enjoy building up collections, and typically these include dolls, miniature cars or even toy guns. For my five-year-old niece, however, the items she prizes happen to be kratik nam, personal water containers students carry to school.

Our cupboard is cluttered and almost overflowing with kratik, almost 20 of them, and there are various sizes and shapes of bottles and cups, many of them bearing logos or cartoons.

As she carries the personal bottles around almost everywhere to sip from, she hardly ever needs to buy drinking water or cold beverages from supermarkets or convenience stores, never mind those soda drinks.

A close friend of her mother once teasingly gave her a popular soda beverage. After having a taste, she said to her mother: "It tastes good but it is not good for us to drink. And by the way, Mum, why did your friend give such an unhealthy drink to young children?" Ouch!

What's more, my niece's nickname is Nam, Thai for water. Her passion for the kratik has made me wonder whether children are like liquid, and if they form according to the shape of their surroundings.

I learned that her school imposes strict rules on drinking water. Students are required to bring their own containers and bottles to school. They must be transparent and only plain, room temperature water is allowed and provided.

I once asked my niece about the appeal of her ever-present water container. "Umm... I just like it," was all she answered as she tried to pour milk into the bottle. This kid could grow up to join Greenpeace or become an environmental crusader in the future, I thought to myself. So, I decided to have a serious talk about the environment. "You know that your kratik nam can help save the earth?"

"What do you mean? Say that again?" the girl asked back, looking at me as if I came from another planet.

I do not know how long this girl can resist the temptations of advertising, freebies and colourful beverage packaging. How long will it be before she starts buying icy frappuccinos, or carrying water bottles with eye-catching logos and designs, like Evian and Fiji which are famous among celebrities?

I cannot resist those temptations. Once in a while and quite often during summer, I will walk into a supermarket, buy a beverage from a refrigerator and later throw the empty bottle away. Walking in shopping malls, I often buy those smoothies, green teas or lattes that come in colourful disposable cups, some made from plastic.

So I decided not to lecture the young girl, at least for now. Let her enjoy carrying around her kratik. In another five years, I might tell her about the importance of the plastic drinking bottles that she carries along. According to the US advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, carrying a personal drinking water bottle means 600 paper and plastic cups and bottles are not being produced per year. This amounts to 10kg of waste that is not generated. Imagine the area needed for landfill for all the millions of cups and bottles we are consuming anyway!

Disposable paper or plastic cups and bottles generate huge amounts of garbage and require vast amounts of petrochemical materials and fossil fuels to produce, and it's one of the causes of climate change.

In the US, it was estimated in 2006 that it took 726 tonnes of plastic and 6.5 million trees to produce 16 million disposable coffee cups consumed there. The production of 16 million cups resulted in emissions with the carbon dioxide equivalent of 1.8 billion tonnes.

So, this might give you a gift idea for young children, even just a little something to start the new school year. And don't forget to buy one for yourself!


Anchalee Kongrut is a feature writer for Life.

Anchalee Kongrut

Editorial pages editor

Anchalee Kongrut is Bangkok Post's editorial pages editor.

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