In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”
That’s right, they didn’t have the green thing in her day. Back then, they returned their milk bottles, Coke bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, using the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.
But they didn’t have the green thing back her day.
In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two blocks.
But she’s right. They didn’t have the green thing in her day.
Back then, they washed the baby’s diapers because they didn’t have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts – wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that old lady is right, they didn’t have the green thing back in her day.
Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a pizza dish, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn’t have electric machines to do everything for you. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used wadded up newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, they didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she’s right, they didn’t have the green thing back then.
They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty, instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled pens with ink, instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But they didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But they didn’t have the green thing back then!
Off topic rant removed.
And back then, the bags were paper, not plastic. At the start of the school year, you brought grocery bags to school with you and spent part of each class that day making book covers out of the grocery bags for your schoolbooks. One girl I grew up with could get the grocery store logo centered on the front cover. I could never master that kind of spatial thinking.
dose anyone else remember WHY plastic bags were first promoted for wide spread use??
IIRC, it was to save trees and save the planet.
Yeah, that’s what I always think of when they start that crap. They thought we were killing too many trees for paper bags so we went to plastic bags. So which is it – paper bad or plastic bad? These leftists need to make up their damn minds. I always stick with plastic bags now.
No. Their job is to confuse, cause hate and discontent.
Go look up “Flour Sack Dresses”. Or you can just click this link:
https://archiveproject.com/the-amazing-history-of-flour-sack-dresses-10-photos
In bad times, people learn to conserve and make do, or do without. Companies that want to stay in business adapt to that and help rather than hinder.
The same with the push for plastic bottles. Cleaning and sterilizing glass bottles cost money for low-skill worker jobs, took energy, and besides, glass was “Unsafe!” because it could break. Never mind the energy and oil/NG needed to separate out some specific aromatics for phthalates (PETE bottles) or make the plastics.
Home brewers or winemakers can clean and sanitize their bottles until they crack or break; just need caps, like the bottlers of the older days. But they don’t have that green thing.
Did the green folks trash part of their phrase “REDUCE, REUSE”, recycle? Bad green!
The same with the push for plastic bottles. Cleaning and sterilizing glass bottles cost money for low-skill worker jobs, took energy, and besides, glass was “Unsafe!” because it could break. Never mind the energy and oil/NG needed to separate out some specific aromatics for phthalates (PETE bottles) or make the plastics.
Home brewers or winemakers can clean and sanitize their bottles until they crack or break; just need caps, like the bottlers of the older days. But they don’t have that green thing.
Did the green folks trash part of their phrase “REDUCE, REUSE”, recycle? Bad green!
Psychkitteh its a little more complicated than that.
1)Refillable glass needs to be somewhat heavier especially if its a soda (charged) dring. If you can find an old 10oz coke bottle compare it to a modern 10oz Hecho en Mexico coke bottle. Old Coke Bottles are prized by amateur (and professional) chemists alike that bottle is TOUGH (likely over designed).
2) That additional weight means additional shipping cost, also as trucks have weight limits you may exceed that and have to use more truck runs for the same amount of liquid. The switch over to plastic started in the 70’s with the “Oil Crisis” which is somewhat ironic given the source of the plastic is oil and assorted distillates.
3) The danger from exploding refillable reused bottles is higher than you would think. High temperatures raise pressures to a couple atmospheres (again mostly of sodas, Milk usually NOT an issue, and always delivered chilled, not pressurized 🙂 ). The act of cleaning the bottles for reuse and using high temperature/pressure to guarantee sterility can build up stress in the glass, a small chip can aggravate this. Took a business law class in college for fun, the number of cases related to severe and gruesome injuries from soda bottles was impressive (Side note you do NOT want to know the things found in bottles of Coke, dead mice and condoms are the LEAST offensive). The liability was mitigated by making the glass heavier (and later by using plastic) returning us to point 1.
Everything is a trade off. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
Collect as many plastic bags as you can. Use them for the Earth Day bonfire. Lotsa black smoke. Not as good as fiberglass boats or tires but easier to light.
Back then the eco-nuts started to complain about paper grocery bags and about the number of trees that were being cut down to manufacture them. Their bright idea was to go to plastic bags in order to save the trees now the plastic bags have become the enemy of these eco-wackos.
Dennis, Joe, & John: Capitulating to the ecoloons is like paying the Danegeld. Rudyard Kipling was correct.
Go back a little farther, and you see that everything was “recycled.” Tea leaves were dried and re-sold, people collected the manure (animal, human, or whatever) for fertilizer, old clothes became other people’s clothes became rag rugs and similar, worn-out leather things were taken apart and the usable pieces re-used … But yes, it wasn’t really “recycling” back then because it wasn’t after Earth Day, 1970s.
Useless trivia – when cars replaced horses in NYC, the East Coast mushroom industry collapsed due to the lack of growing materials [composted manure]. Mushrooms became a luxury instead of cheap food for the poor and middle-class.
…people collected the manure (animal, human, or whatever) for fertilizer, old clothes became other people’s clothes became rag rugs and similar,…”
I grew up on a farm, shoveling sh*t out of the stalls and spreading it on the fields in the spring was ritual. And old clothes became rags (T-shirts especially) and quilts.
All- You are correct! As TXRed said, it was because it was BEFORE Earth Day 1970…sigh
I can remember doing the paper bag covers on our books as kids too, and I never could get the logo right either, so I turned mine inside out…LOL
Sad thing is many schools don’t issue text books anymore. They pass photocopies of the material to the students every day.
Back then, school districts charged parents for torn up textbooks, and kept editions (unless they were patently wrong) as long as 10 years.
Of course, back then, they actually taught English grammar and composition, math (without electronic calculators, though electric calculators existed but were expensive and not pocket-sized) and basic science so only idiots were ill-read, unable to make change and didn’t understand things like cyclical weather patterns.
Almost like eliminating those made people unable to resist all the propaganda…
Beans,
it was clear to me back in the late 60’s that high school textbooks were not factual, compared to the books in the schools’ own library. IIRC, the life expectancy of a textbook was reduced to ~2 to 4 years, so they could continue to fake the contents without catching the attention of students who might see them later in their school life.
Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com makes the case for using single-use plastic bags. TLDR: the environmental effect of one reusable cotton bag equals the effect of 173 single-use bags.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4711
Re-using milk bottles… In grade school (4th grade IIRC) I could get a free lunch by washing and stacking used milk bottles as students dropped them off after finishing their lunches. It also allowed me to eat earlier. Bonus, winning…
Only issue I have with that rant, is a 1940ish Ford Super Deluxe coupe got 15ish MPG, with a 221cid 85hp V8.
Vs a say 2017 Ford Taurus ecoboost I4 making 240hp gets about 30mpg on average, with better heat, ac, and massively more safely.
on which one will last longer, older cars, at least American made ones pre-2000 were lucky to get more than 150K miles, now if they dont get to 300k miles mark odds are you got a lemon.
D….
I’m not arguing with you regarding mileage, but it would be interesting to compare manufacturing inputs if we built the same designs from – say – the late 80s and early 90s, with current manufacturing technology.
I say that because I have four farm utility vehicles (Toyotas) from that era , and they are simple, robust, functional and fixable. I understand that they are still making vehicles of that low-level of complexity in Asia.
Oh… and the 1992 Toyota Landcruiser with the non-turbo 4.2L diesel has 662000km on the clock, with the original engine and hardly uses oil.
Diesels need to have Turbos so they can make train noises!!!
And yeah i miss my 1975 IDI al mechanical diesel but it had not power and needed a turbo.
But yeah if I could get a say 1975 dentside with a modern mfg 390fe with fuel enjection with say a 10speed auto behind it, I thing it would be not only a blast to drive, but if I could keep it from making RARTH noises I bet it would get decent mpg.
That should say 85 not 75 for the idi, typo.
Given the price of modern vehicles, the moat cost-effective thing I can do is to keep putting diesel in the old bangers. The savings in fuel on a new design are not enough to cover the cost of purchase and servicing.
My query is whether an older design made with current manufacturing methods would have the same cost advantage and whether it would be sufficient to offset the additional fuel used.
I believe the Indians do this and sell them for around $20k. You could buy a lot of diesel with the difference.
Excellent points and well pondered!