Letter to the Editor: Reinventing the wheel
Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Plastics, for example, became increasingly popular beginning in the 1950s and I have clear childhood memories of pre-plastics living. Aluminum foil to cover glass bowls or wrap leftovers, lunch sandwiches wrapped with wax paper and carried in metal lunchboxes or brown paper bags, toys made from metal or paper or wood, beverages sold in glass containers, loose trash wrapped in old newspapers, and so on.
In fact I have adopted these old practices as use of plastics has been discouraged.
Old newspapers have multiple uses. Years ago I used layers of them to block the growth of weeds while I created a pathway in my backyard . They ultimately broke down leaving a manageable walkway.
Products made from plastic, a petroleum product, were heavily marketed as lightweight, easy to use and long lasting. Long lasting for sure!
Pam Cross
Shoreline
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3 comments:
I enjoyed your article.
Well put. I'll add this "pet peeve" to your comment, Pam. During COVID, we were encouraged to use grocery store (and other) pickup options vs. going into the store. Now, the bag fee is back, thus those who use pickup options are penalized by being charged for bags, whether plastic, as I believe they should be, or paper, which are easily recycled in their garbage/recycle pickup. To me, the bag fee makes no sense for paper bags, especially where pickup customers are essentially a captive audience with no choice (other than going into the store again). Perhaps some people have, as a result of the fees, returned to the stores, while others like me grumble about having a trunk full of reusable bags that lie dormant if they use pick-up and collect plastic bags for stuffing into their grocery store's oft-full bins after they finally get tired enough of looking at them piling up in their homes. One store that I know of, Walmart, stopped using bags altogether, while Costco has had empty boxes/cardboard containers that used to hold products for herding one's "cats" of items into one place. It seems to me that the legislature needs to update the policy, much like employers have in regards to remote work, which used to be disdained by most of them.
Pam Cross thanks for the memories of life without plastics, and more importantly about how harmful plastics are!
Thank you Pam, and Shoreline LTE for her informative and interesting letter!
Thessalonika T Benny
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