The Eye

The Irish have embraced the use of cloth bags to carry their groceries, encouraged by a 33-cent tax on each plastic bag grabbed at the register, I read this in this morning’s New York Times.

What I find almost amusing, if it wasn’t a serious issue, is this whole concept of recycling.

When I was a kid, my mother would sent me to the local store to buy groceries. I always took a large cloth shopping bag. She kept one in a closet in the kitchen solely to keep vegetables in.

I would go to the greengrocer, and get the potatoes first. They went into the bottom. Not wrapped up, you understand, just loose potatoes from the greengrocers scale pan. Then the other vegetables went on top.

After that I would go next door to the bakers and get the bread. Fresh baked earlier that morning, unsliced. It would be put in a brown paper bag. My mother used those paper bags, along with some greaseproof paper, to wrap my fathers sandwiches for work.

I’d perhaps have to go to the grocers to get some ham and cheese, again it was wrapped in paper. The same at the butchers. No plastic wrap in sight.

Milk was delivered to the door step each day in glass bottles, that we put outside when empty which the milkman took away again to re-used, sterilized, and re-filled with more fresh milk. If we bought soda, it was in a glass bottle, on which we paid a few pennies deposit, and got back when we took the bottles back.

If my father went to the hardware store for four screws, he got just that. Four screws. We also had a local tailor and shoe-mender. New zips got put into pants, and soles on shoes, socks got darned. Oh, and if the TV or radio developed a fault, there was a nice man in another store that would usually be able to fix it for us.

Now, fast forward 40 years.

We go to the supermarket across town, using gas to get there. The potatoes are in a plastic bag, as are all the other vegetables, and the bread. The ham, cheese, and meat, and in sealed containers now. The milk is in a large plastic carton. Soda is in cans, and PET bottles.

Those hardware items like screws now usually come in a plastic container of 48 screws, that practically takes wire cutters to open, or cut fingers if trying to do it by hand.

Tailor? Get a zip sewn in? Heck, no, throw the pants away, and get a new pair! Same with the TV. It’s lasted 3-4 years, it’s time for a newer, bigger, higher definition one anyway. That one can go to the dump.

Now, there’s all this clamor for recycling projects and plans. It’s good. Sure. But, what about cutting back on some of that plastic? Do we need to have so much packaging? What about using glass again, and re-using the bottles?

Surely if we were to re-adopt some of those ideas from 40 years ago, we’d have a lot less going in the landfill to start with? That’s before we start spending more money on any other municipal recycling schemes.