YANGON, Myanmar Golden earrings swing from San San Thwins ears as she serves customers in her grocery store in Mingalun village, 90 miles from Myanmars commercial capital Yangon. This is what she has done almost every day for 30 years, but there has been a striking change in recent times: Every item for sale, with the exception of the eggs at the entrance, now comes packaged in plastic.

It didnt used to be like this, says the 56-year-old. We used to sell homemade snacks and cakes. But as the country developed, all goods got imported and came wrapped plastic just boomed 10 years ago.

The sparsely furnished shop is now crammed with cakes in colorful parcels, biscuits in plastic boxes, sachets of coffee displayed on a rug. On the shelves, piled up to the ceiling, are medicines and soft drinks in plastic bottles. For San San Thwin, this new plastic world is mostly positive. We can buy more goods now, because they last longer, so we sell more, she says. We wouldnt go back if it meant less profit.

Plastic is a relatively recent phenomenon in Myanmar, which opened up its economy in 2011 after five decades of military dictatorship. Rapid economic growth has meant an influx of single-use plastic items like shopping bags, water bottles, food packets, plastic sachets and menstrual pads.

These items have ushered in benefits from being able to preserve food longer in a country that experiences extreme weather conditions, to allowing products to be sold in smaller sachets, making them affordable to those on low incomes. Plastic has also satisfied the craving for modernity and progress after decades of isolation.