Anyway, just a quick test. Can never hurt. Better to be safe than sorry. I take the cardboard box out of the cupboard and open the round plastic sticker. On top is a sea of manuals in different languages, with step-by-step plans and illuminating illustrations. Underneath a cotton swab, in plastic. Also floating in the box is a plastic tube with transparent liquid, closed with foil. A plastic spout dangles from the side. When the yield of the cotton swab and the liquid have found each other, the spout goes on the bottle, for easy dripping. The dripping leads to the last part: the test itself, after the plastic in which the test – together with a dryness bag – has been removed.
The test has been taken. A kitchen timer counts down, from 15 minutes back to zero. It must have been during that time of reflection, looking at the pile of plastic waste, that social media users began to wonder: is so much plastic really necessary? And the test part itself, what’s in it?
Among others Chaim Meir Tessler opened his test. The content: a paper strip. That’s all. Such a paper strip that checks the water quality in the swimming pool or is tested for drugs at customs.
Countless tests have now been used. They all ended up as trash after fifteen minutes. Even if the cover is necessary to prevent people from making fewer mistakes, Tessler writes, why don’t we all give households one plastic test box and then only have to buy the individual paper strips?
And if we continue that thought, why isn’t there a bottle of test solution, like the one for contact lenses?
Out of the closet I would grab a bottle of test fluid and my reusable plastic case. A paper test strip, a new cotton swab and a dropper (can that be made of paper?) come from a box. Test for a quarter of an hour, strip out. Keep the test box, close the bottle again. Everything back in the cupboard, still a lot of testing to go. #fuckplastic, uses Tessler as a hashtag.
My test is negative.