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Plastic Bags


RickS

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Right.  Coca Cola bottles were glass and you had to pay 2 cents deposit on each bottle and we were sure to return them to the store to get the 2 cents refund or apply it to the next 6 pack of cokes. !!  It worked.  Not many glass bottles laying around, and if they were, someone would pick them up and go get 2 cents a piece for them !

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Very true. Living in the country, on a dirt road just one mile away from a corner store, we would walk there with our eyes on the ditches. By the time we got to the store, we usually had enough bottles to trade in for a candy bar, or a pack of gum. Sometimes, we got back home with a few pennies to save.

Back then, the pennies were real copper, nickles were actually nickel, and dimes and quarters contained real silver. Even dollar bills could be redeemed for silver bouillon. Now, our money is without real value and must be spent quickly, before it shrinks even further.  I retired over 20 years ago, with enough to live comfortably......20 years ago; not now!

Back to the bags:  Neither paper nor plastic are appropriate any more, for different reasons. Maybe The South could rise again, growing cotton to make string for biodegradable string bags, and maybe even some kind of cotton derived paper or cellophane wrapping for meats; tied with a string, of course. The string should be saved in balls, as our grandmothers taught us, to be used for her to tie up roasts of beef or pork, and for us to use to make kites. Life was good!

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I have had a couple of these bags for almost 20 years.  They still smell pretty from the laundry soap and fabric softener.  

 

It's made from recycled trash in Indonesia! What a great way to cut down on the number of cheapo plastic bags used in the grocery store. Jakarta's trashpickers are paid six times their normal living wage by XS Project in Indonesia.

 

jakarta bag.jpg

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I am more worried about the type of plastics that can not be recycled than paper, which usually can. Heck in Seattle I use the same paper bags at grocery stores as long as I can so I wont have to buy new ones for 25 cents apiece. The reason I do this is less to save money and more to be a kind of sort of an environmentalist .

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When i was a kid veggies were wrapped in newspaper and meat in wax paper and you brought a bag with you. Wine water ans milk were in glass bottles and que had wirem metal baskets to carry those..  We had nets or baskets we would take to the market and my mother shopped every day.. 

 

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There are (still) paper mills all over the South and Pacific Northwest. I grew up in a paper mill town..... pew wee, stink. Due to the advent of the horrible plastic bags, many mills had/have a hard time but, since our population is waaaay more than back then, paper is still being produced. 

Many folks who speak without knowledge suggest that paper mills were/are wrecking the forests. Truth is paper mills have always reforrested the land or their business would soon die for the lack of trees. It was not always (ever?) very pretty as there is nothing like a natural forest, but the landside was not left bare (some places were until replanted) and the new trees soaked up CO2 just like the old ones did. 

 

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