I’D Like To Set The Record Straight

[carolegif]

Yesterday, all I heard from lots of young people how us Baby Boomers had ruined the planet, so let’s get this straight. When we and our parents were young, there was no plastic.

Meat and fish were wrapped in grease proof paper and old newspaper, as was butter or lard. Soft fruit and veg, cakes and biscuits were put in paper bags. Root veg covered in soil went straight into a shopping bag, usually made from old curtains (so that’s where Cath Kidston got her idea from!).
‘Dry Goods like flour, sugar, dried fruit etc., was written in a little blue book by my Mum or Nan and taken down to the Maypole or Home and Colonial, to be delivered the following day by a boy on a bike containing the cardboard box on the front with the items wrapped in thick blue paper and folded on the top in such a way nothing fell out.

Milk came in glass bottles delivered in an electric vehicle call a milk float.

So please will someone tell these young people that they are the plastic lovers. It makes it more scary to think how short a time it took for it to get into the seas.

[pixie374]

I'm not sure young people asked for plastic.

[ummmm]

The kids making a stand currently paid no part in our use of plastic.

[ummmm]

I wonder who invented plastic packaging?

[ichkeria]

I’m no spring chicken but most of the things mentioned in the OP were well before my time.
We get our milk in glass bottles from an electric float tho :-)

[dannyk13]

I can remember everything that Carole has mentioned.Also the milkman used to collect the empty bottles and recycle them.

[pixie374]

They still do, Danny. I would imagine it was the companies that first used plastic as it was cheaper. It wasn't until after that anyone really decided it might become a problem.

[carolegif]

Ichkeria, I’m 72, and had milk delivered by milk float until the 1980’s!

[Old_Geezer]

Much of it did seem to come in while I was too young to have a voice, and no one clicked to the fact that many things we were becoming reliant on would end up being a headache for the world. No one can rely on foresight, hindsight is marvellous. And making the noise of protests without consideration of the consequences of overthrowing all we live by now, is easy to do; but irresponsible to fulfill. We need a balance between keeping all ticking along and correcting important issues.

[pixie374]

We have milk and orange juice delivered in glass bottles, and it's 2019 :-)

[Old_Geezer]

Still don't know why toothpaste manufacturers haven't gone back to recoverable metal tubes though.

[Jackdaw33]

If you took a pile of newspapers to the chip shop they would give you a bag of chips in return.

[Old_Geezer]

Really ? Had to be clean newspapers though; no News Of The World ;-)

[hc4361]

The milkman still delivers in my street, around 11am three times a week.
He charges 81p for a pint of milk. I buy mine in 6 pint plastic bottles for £1.49, just under 25p a pint. The plastic bottles are taken by my council recycling lorries.
I'm not surprised we started buying milk from the supermarket, who also deliver to the door at a day and time we want.

[roopower]

I can remember going to Mrs Gaskins and her tipping veg straight into my mum's shopping bag. We had Corona delivered every week, glass bottles, empty ones swapped for the flavour of choice and Lucozade was in a glass bottle with yellow cellophane wrapped round it. Great fun, looking through it made everyone look jaundiced. Simple pleasures.

[aelmpvw]

ah, those were the days, entrance to the children's Saturday morning film for a jam jar :-)

[hc4361]

Paper packaging is all well and good except paper bags are far heavier and bulkier than the equivalent plastic bags so need more haulage and storage.

[roopower]

Can also remember the butchers with sawdust on the floor and going to the fish merchant for a pint of shrimps, measured in a pint pewter pot.

[hc4361]

Never did understand the point of the cellophane on glass lucozade bottles - a sheer waste of resources.

[hc4361]

My butcher still has sawdust on the floor :)

[hc4361]

I think that plastic packaging of food stuff became popular with the advent of self service supermarkets where a lot of food was pre-packaged for the first time out of necessity.