The Martian

I just watched the movie The Martian and such space exploration movies are my favourite.

It's talking about a botanist on a Mars mission got abandoned by his team mates as they thought he was dead. However he managed to survive and found ways to survive on Mars alone while waiting for help.

It was quite an interesting topic. It's a bit like Castaway except that the environment is an alien planet.  Seriously I think Hollywood over these few years had started to develop really good and thought provoking movies like Interstellar and The Martian. The movie makers actually collaborated with Nasa to try to make movies closer to the reality of the space travel concept and technology.

The acting is superb especially Matt Damon. While the movie promote positivism and optimistic views of the never give up and helping one another spirit, but in reality, I am skeptical. Anyway this is a movie which is supposed to be entertaining.

Planting potatoes and making water on an alien planet seems far fetch idea, but it looks convincing in the movie. After watching it, I am quite inspired and some thoughts came to my mind.

Recently movies like Interstellar and The Martian are sending out messages that someday humans may need to migrate to other planets as Earth is dying. Yes, I believe that our mother Earth is dying as long as human beings continue our plundering acts. I believe that the resources on earth will run out someday.

Mars logically is one of the targeted planet since it is near to Earth. The Nasa released of the recent news of finding water on Mars had such an impeccable timing which raised the publicity of this new movie.

The thought of space travel intrigued me since young. I still remember many years ago during my junior college time, I wrote a GP paper about the gullies and canyon found on Mars which implied there's a possibility of water on Mars. Unfortunately I got a C or D for that paper if I remembered correctly. One of my bucket list is to be able to travel to space and see the earth. I think commercial space travel may be possible during my lifetime. I hope the space travel tickets will be affordable by then.

In conclusion, The Martian is a good movie. It is 2hours and 20mins long but I don't feel draggy. It is worth your pop corn money. But compared to Interstellar, I still think Interstellar is more superior in terms of the story, the directing, the emotions and the characters development.

My green project

I always wanted to do something about reducing plastic bags usage. Plastic is one substance which is  very difficult to be decompose, something that Earth cannot digest. Plastic and many other pollutants are hurting our mother Earth. I think if we human beings don't do something about it to stop our plummeting ways, sooner or later, we are heading towards self destruction.

But the sad fact is, plastic is present in almost every products and everywhere. Plastic bags, water bottles , baby milk bottles, plastic cups, disposable utensils and so many others. They are cheap, readily available and most importantly disposable which is hassle free and convenient. It is extremely difficult to convince the majority to ditch plastic and go for greener products as most of the people including myself are so used to using plastic.

Therefore I felt those green slogans about reducing plastic bags are quite ironic. On one hand they are advocating reducing the usage of plastic bags but how to reduce the usage when plastic bags are so readily available? One good example will be NTUC. They put up signboards to ask people to reduce using plastic bags. However, they give out plastic bags so easily and people can just self service and grab the plastic bags. They encouraged people to use recycle bags by giving a miserable $0.10 discount which is not effective at all.  Just one grocery trip to supermarket alone will get me at least 5-6 pieces of plastic bags. And every day I need at least 4-6 pieces of plastic bags to wrap my rubbish. To make it effective, they could learn from Ikea of not giving out plastic bags anymore. This will get people to think of ways to carry their purchase if they don't want to pay for the plastic bags.

I did try to bring my own reusable bags when buying grocery. But when plastic bags run out, it goes back to square one. What should we use to throw our rubbish in? The dustbin need a liner or something to hold the rubbish if not it will be so messy and smelly. That is why it is tough to break free from plastic bags usage.

To be plastic free, I think it can only be achieve with more education about the hazard of plastic since young and teaching people how to do things differently without plastic. While we can educate, it also boils down to people's willingness to try out alternatives other than plastic. To influence that willingness, there must be some initiative and support from the family upbringing, the government, the media, leaders, school, famous entertainers (e.g. TV/movie stars) to change the culture and mindset of the mass that it is cool to go green and a new way of living. Not just simply talk but taking actions of what and how they are going green. Well, I am just dreaming that this could happen some day.

So here I am trying some small steps to achieve my plastic free goal. It is challenging I think, but I am willing to give it a try. I always believe there should be a much better way which is more environmental friendly.

So I started search online and found some you tube videos teaching about making dustbin liner or waste paper bag using newspaper.

I tried out few methods and this is one of the best method I found so far.  I made this waste paper bag using newspaper and the size is just right to fit my dustbin. It holds the waste beautifully and is quite sturdy as I used 3 sheets of newspaper for each paper bag.

At the bottom of the bag, I put some waste papers to form a thicker base so waste water may not seep through. For those wet waste, I will just wrap it with waste paper or use those food wrappers which usually will be throw away after opening before throwing into my paper bag.

Once the bag is about 3/4 full, I will fold the opening and staple it to seal the bag properly before throwing into the rubbish chute.

Here's the pros:

• This waste paper bag can hold more rubbish. I only need to use at most 2 paper bags each day rather than 5-6 plastic bags. 
• It absorbs the smell and not so smelly as compared to using plastic bags. 
• I can now reduce my stacks of newspaper and waste papers instead of stacking them up high in my storeroom.

The cons are these:

• It can be quite troublesome to make the bags. I need to glue the edges and bottom to make it hold together firmly. But once you get the hang out of it, it is quite easy. 
• It takes time to make the bags. For my requirements, I need about 2 bags daily, so every week I will need 14 bags. What I do is to set aside some time once a week to make my bags. 

The review
I have used it for 1 week plus and so far it is working great. My newspaper and waste paper stacks are reducing. I am using my recycle bags whenver I go grocery shopping to avoid getting plastic bags.

I am still sourcing for better ways to do up my wastepaper bags. If you have better ideas, do share with me :)

My newspaper waste paper bag

This is how it looks like after putting into my dustbin