Information
Satire
Once upon a time the single use prime minister of a small pacific nation at the bottom of the world had a neuron-free generational moment. Needing big-ups on the world stage and wanting to impress other newly minted leaders like Justin Time and Heman U L Macron she decided on a singularly useless war on single use handles.
It all began one day while mixing with the common folk and paying for peoples’ shopping in a supermarket (while a photographer was fortuitously nearby) that she decided to look carefully at the shelves.
My goodness, the place was full of single useness.
Single use cardboard boxes for cornflakes, single use tins for spaghetti, single use bottles and cartons for milk, single use wrappers on chocolate bars, single use bottles for shampoo, single use cans of turtle soup, single use bags for frozen chickens, single use disposable nappies, single use toilet paper, single use condoms … it was everywhere. The single useness had been singularly successful.
Knowing that the planet, the turtles and the UN were depending on her virtue she hurried home to find an adult to consult. Unfortunately only a washed up media fisherman was there. But at least he was on the porch, so that was a start.
Over a single-use takeaway, they debated and pondered the issue. What could be done?
Getting out a single use pen and a piece of single use A4 (the back of the single use takeaway till receipt was deemed too small for their grand plan) they began to sketch out some ideas. Two hours passed and the single use pen had not had a single use and the single use paper remained stubbornly blank.
They simply could not get a handle on the problem until they started to clear the table and picked up the carrier bag that the takeaway came in. In that single moment it all became clear – the carrier bag had handles, nothing else she had noticed on the supermarket shelves had handles.
We can ban the handles and trumpet our single use virtue she realised, and so they did.
And that is why, children, to this very day, you will never find a single use handle when shopping.
