This is a photo series about single-use plastic here in Malaysia.

"Bungkus ikat tepi bang!"

The average Malaysian, I'd say, uses some form of single-use plastic almost on a daily basis.  Most definitely, if you're a person that frequently does take-away drinks, especially from the local street vendors,  or if you get anything to-go from a "pasar malam" night markets, or "kopitiams" local coffee shops. The way we do it here in Malaysia, at least when purchasing a drink from street food and drink vendors, is to get our drinks "bungkus" packed to-go, in a way we call "ikat tepi" tied-on-the-side, for its literal English translation. Drinks are served in a little plastic bag, tied on one side with a plastic string (sometimes tied completely shut to drink at a later time), hence the term ikat tepi tied-on-the-side, and with a plastic straw. In my opinion, it could very well be the poster child for single-use plastic here in Malaysia. It is easy, cheap, convenient and it is used almost everywhere here in Malaysia with almost any kind of drink you want. 

This isn't a photo series to knock on the ikat tepi way of life though. It is too ingrained in the fabric of our society's street food culture as Malaysians that I too am culpable of doing it, especially when on the go and in need of a quick drink. So please don't think I'm this eco-warrior, on a warpath to get rid of ikat tepi's completely. But rather this series is a reflection of our society's inability to be environmentally friendly, and how, because this method of takeaway drinks is so ubiquitous, cheap, convenient, that there currently isn't a better, more convenient, and especially more environmentally friendly way of changing it. And it definitely can't be changed overnight. At least in my opinion. Unless we all just give up plastic for good and use our own re-usable portable liquid bottles wherever we go, but that's a long-shot, and probably never going to happen in this lifetime. Yes, there are new directives by the government to reduce single-use plastic at supermarkets and some high-end restaurants are not serving plastic straws anymore. And yes, some of us are bringing their own bottles around, being socially and environmentally conscious about plastic. But the vast majority of us don't, so it's not even scratching at the surface of recycling in Malaysia, let alone trying to save the planet!

At the end of the day, ikat tepi is just too easy. 

This series began with a photo of this quintessential Malaysian way of getting a drink to go, and one that was placed in a rather peculiar place: an ikat tepi hung on a red fire hydrant post and possibly just left there. It also happened to be at about the same time I picked up the February 2019 copy of the Asian Geographic. A whole issue dedicated to the issues on plastic waste and in particular single-use plastic. The articles in that issue and the image of the ikat tepi hung on the fire hydrant got me on the path to doing this series as I walked on the streets of KL doing my usual street photography stuff. Gathering photos for this series was not hard. As I said, it's everywhere, people can drink any and all types of beverages from it, and hang it almost everywhere they can think of. That's the convenience of it.  Having your drink on the go, being able to hang it up anywhere you want, is exactly what ikat tepi is all about. It’s the beauty of an ikat tepi.

This series of photos is about these ikat tepi's I've witnessed on the streets. I've been photographing them as they have been left, hanging, in some of the most unusual spots, and some in spots that are so common it's inevitable that you'll see one hanging there too if you're out and about. Hanging to be drunk eventually, or just left hung out to dry and die a slow death, I photographed them all. I started this project around February this year and have been slowly collecting these photos for this series. Most of these photos were taken between February and June this year, with a few towards the end of the year.

Can Malaysia become a zero single-use plastic nation one day? Maybe, one day. Fingers crossed and we can hope. But judging by how we consume our ikat tepi’s here in Malaysia, it’ll be a long hard road ahead for us. In the meantime, for my next blog post, I will post another series showcasing the darker side of ikat tepi, its wastefulness and our dismal approach in disposing of this plastic fantastic way of life properly.   

I’ll leave you with some quotes from that February issue of Asian Geographic to help raise the awareness of single-use plastic.

Single-use plastics make up half of the 300 million tones of plastic we produce a year

Every year at least 8 tons of plastic ends up in our oceans

We buy one million plastic bottles every minute around the world

Only 9% of our global plastic waste is recycled

Half a million plastic straws are used every day

A plastic straw takes 200 years to biodegrade

52% of all waste thrown away is plastic packaging

About 4 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year

I hope you like this series, and I hope at the very least it’ll ask you to think about the next time you get your bungkus ikat tepi or just that straw the next time you go for a drink.

Cheers

All photos were taken with the Fujifilm X100S.

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