Plastic!

[Oma]

I use Tabs for my Washing but the tubs they come in B recycles he has them screwed to a board in the shed with odds and ends in like screws , nails ,wire etc

[Plantaholic]

That is great Oma, I wish I could find a use for mine.

[Daisy]

It's good when you can find a use for plastic containers. I buy Fish, blood and bone for the garden and allotment in large plastic tubs but I reuse them to mix potting compost in, throw weeds in, decant things like Vermiculite into them and carry things round the garden etc until they actually fall apart.

[Oma]

I was thinking about this yesterday , there are lots of things I wonder what we would put in if not plastic .
What about likes of Shampoo , Bleach, toilet cleaner , Washing up liquid , etc , when you look around your house there are a lot of things you just don't think about , even roll on Deodorant , I know we can have spray deodorant but not all people can use them then there is the gasses to consider , It's a mine field really

[Daisy]

Oma - I've had exactly the same thoughts! I tried to think back to when we were children and what things came in then. A lot of the products we use now didn't even exist! Conditioner? I think it was something you gave horses. Washing up liquid - soda crystals, in a paper/card bag, and Vim or Ajax scouring powder in cardboard drums. Soap powder - was powder in a cardboard box, or hard soap cut up and melted in the wash boiler. Even toothpaste came in a hard block in a tin (Gibbs Dentifrice). When we started getting tubes of toothpaste they were some kind of soft metal that sometimes split as you rolled them up to get the last bit out. I can remember shampoo was either a powder in a paper sachet (Vaseline) or a glass bottle.

I can't remember how bleach was sold. Polish was a hard waxy substance in a tin, like shoe polish. Fruit and veg were all loose and weighed out as the customer wanted them. Ditto with grocery items like cheese and bacon. Tea leaves (no tea bags then) was in 1/4 lb cardboard packets.

I suppose I remember these things because we lived in a shop! The only things I can think of that are still packaged exactly the same way are sugar and flour.

[Plantaholic]

So true Daisy, remember the dolly blue?

[Oma]

I remember toothpaste in a round tin I think it was Dentine, pink and lovely 😊 Shampoo in sachet ' s ,Vim in the cardboard tubes with the little metal pierced top , I remember fairy liquid in a plastic bottle even then , no toilet cleaner it was good old Vim and scrubbed by hand 😊

[Qwerty]

Oma o so remember those products and if we ran out of toothpaste we cleaned our teeth with salt !!!
I use my plastic tubs for little toys Mobil little play people, packs of cards the kids have for playing snap, dolls furniture for the house etc OH screws glass jar lids to the bottom of the shelves in garage and then screws the jar to the lids for nails, screws, etc

[Gemini]

Germolene came in little round tins too.

DD3 uses shampoo bars from Lush .Quite expensive but last a long time and no plastic packagiing

[Nana]

There was a programme on tv the other week given by a young female presenter. I saw the preview but couldn't bring myself to watch the programme. The effect waste plastic has on the sea wildlife was heartbreaking.

At our local wildlife park water bottles have been replaced by white cardboard cartons but still stand among shelves & shelves of colouful drinks bottles. Packaging has always been an issue especially in marketing. We know as Grans that if you stand a little one in front of a shelf display the choice will always be colouful & with their favourite character on the package. Lots of thoughtful discussion here.

Sunshine I missed you joining. Welcome. We're a nice bunch really. Sometimes as mad as a box of frogs.😉🐸

[Daisy]

Plant - yes, I remember the dolly blue - Reckitt's. You put the little cubes into muslin and put it in your white wash to make it nice and white.

Do you remember gravy browning and gravy salt? I think you can still get gravy salt.

Oma - I was thinking I couldn't remember any toilet cleaner other than bleach - our toilet must have been Vim'd when I wasn't looking!

It seems everything came in simple packaging - whatever was the minimum to protect the product.

[Oma]

I remember Duraglit the brass and silver polish also came in a furniture polish , it was the wadding like the brass cleaner but had bees wax soaked in , Mam would go mad if we opened the tin to sniff and not put the lid back on properly as it dried out
In reality we don't need packaging on lots of items , fresh fruit and veg do not need to be in plastic bags , Mushrooms don't need a plastic tray and cling film same as Strawberries they were much nicer in little cardboard baskets ,
Grapes came in paper bags ,
I remember sugar , flour, salt coming in Blue paper bags ,
We are all used to taking our own shopping bags now and no one misses the free carrier bags im sure we would soon get used to having stuff in paper bags too,
I don't see a future entirely without plastic packaging there are to many things like I have mentioned before like fabric conditioner etc but we could get rid of a lot

[Daisy]

I agree Oma - there's a lot of packaging we could do without. It's not just food that uses too much packing. Anything small seems to come in a blister pack or plastic coated cardboard sleeves that can be hung on spikey things in the shops. Most of that is driven by self-service systems I suppose.

If we had less self-service in shops a lot of things could be sold without packaging. We've got an old-fashioned ironmongers in our village and if you want something small like nails, they're in a large cardboard box and they count out however many you want, and put them in a brown paper bag. Same in the greengrocers - and that is self-service! We sold sweets in my parents' shop and almost everything came in jars and we weighed sweets out and put them in white paper bags. I think the glass jars were returned to the wholesaler for reuse. Even with self-service shops like Woolies had Pick'n'mix where you weighed out your own sweeties.

Yesterday my OH went to Screwfix (eat your heart out Oma!) and came back with a new float ball and brass connecting pieces for the cold water tank and a new outlet connector thingy for the bathroom loo. Each item was in a plastic bag with a sticker showing the product reference and the SKU number. None of these items will be visible when fitted so couldn't the essential information be stamped on and do away with the bags?