Ours did too. But soda came in glass bottles and had a deposit - .02 for small bottles and .05 for the quarts. I don't remember there being much plastic trash. Most stuff came wrapped in paper, if the product was liquid they had a wax coating on the inside of the bag or box.
Yes, I remember my dad saying “no plastic or glass in the kitchen garbage can” even had the big paper bags from Kroger, Pick N Pay or Vlaseks grocery store for garbage bags. Also my Dad replacing the broken fire bricks from time to time, and the constant sifting of the grate to dump ashes into the ash box.
Coca Cola was sued (I think they finally won) because their ‘100% Recyclable’ bottles were not recyclable without removing the label. I too am against a lot of government regulation, but I think deposits on bottles and cans is a good requirement. Quite a few states require them now and no vendor has quit those states because of them. In fact, I’d expand that to include any ‘to go’ food. If it comes through a window or gets carried out of a convenience store ‘ready to eat’, there needs to be some surcharge that gets funneled into roadside trash pickup. I’m tired of picking up assholes’ fast food bags, beer bottles and Monster cans from my yard. Patrick
I agree. I do the CLYNK thing. I lose a penny or two on each, but it is worth every penny to just drop them off instead of humping all my redeemables to the local redemption folks only to find they aren't open for whatever reason and having to hump them all back home. My time is worth something. I don't want to give the impression that I don't recycle at all. I do. Just not the stuff they make me jump through hoops for, only to find out they've been dumping it in the ocean all along. Screw that. Into the dumpster it goes. At least I know the cans and bottles are probably 95% going to get recycled because someone is paying back 5-15 cents per container. But who knows, maybe they are also going into a land fill. The thread of corruption weaves its way deep through society so literally nothing would surprise me anymore. Nothing. My friend Dave used to call me EnviroMan, because I was hyped on recycling literally everything. But then I woke up because year after year I'd hear more reports about recycling scams etc. then realized I'm far too naive. I've learned.
Another thing that leads to good people saying ‘F*ck This!!’ is when you see something like the cleanup after a hurricane, where entire neighborhoods are pushed over into piles, houses, cars and belongings together, grabbed by the claw thing and dropped into a dump trailer, bound for the landfill. That and the map showing all the private planes leaving Vegas the Monday after the Superbowl… Patrick
Most plastic ends up in ocean and then we eat it in our fish. I read it could already be in our blood stream, shouldn't cause a problem should it? yeah. Get rid of the plastic and go back to paper products, that can be recycled and will rot back into the ground just like in the 60's. We now know how to grow trees and harvest them, better than letting them burn down and pollute the air right? There 2 problems solved without much brains.
Try to buy soda in cans or bottles that have a $0.05 refund on them. Taught the kids to put them in a bag when done and then when we take them back, they split the money. I have a few glass beer bottles that don't have a refund and I asked about a place that takes them, and no one take them. Said dumpster.
My daughter is a Girl Scout, and their environmental slogan is brilliant in its simplicity. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. First, stop using as much. If it’s useless, cheap junk, don’t buy it. If it’s flimsy, buy better. Buy fewer things but better quality. Second, don’t just use it once and discard. Cool Whip containers, the plactic tubs from takeout, bread bags, all have more uses than their first. Buy better aluminum foil and use it mutiple times. The plastic clamps on pants hangers, cut off, make great chip clips. Ziploc bags, especially the name brand, can be used several times. Buy better quality clothing, repair it, then donate it. Or just keep wearing it. Rebuild your alternators and starters. Buy a Vitamix blender once and repair it IF it ever breaks. Use Ethanol free fuel in your lawn stuff so you don’t have to buy carburetors. It it quits anyway, fix it. (So many times I see push mowers just thrown away). Third, after those two impact reductions have been tried, then try to recycle it. Much like the debate raging now about EVs versus ICE, a lot of improvement can be made with small things and the small things don’t require a revolution to inact. Patrick
Agree 100% Rebuild, re-use, repurpose!! My boss likes to “I’ll just order a new one” That mentality drives me nuts! Why buy new when a few bucks and a few hours your good to go, and you don’t have another object to toss out. And buying cheap **** isn’t saving any money either
We have a working pressure washer, and two more for parts/repair, from when my son worked at a golf course. Two had already ‘broken’ and when the third failed, the boss said ‘haul those to the dumpster! I’ll go get a new one (again).’ My son brought them all home, ifentified the best one and scavenged something from the others to fix it. Any other kid would have enjoyed the noise of breaking them as he tossed them out. Patrick
I agree with Patrick. The push power mower is the first new power lawnmower that I have ever owned; all of the others came out of the town transfer station. I would just look for a discarded mower that appeared to be complete, make sure that it would turn over and had compression, then take it home and clean out the carburetor. I would run it until (literally) the wheels fell off, then go get another. I have been reusing 90% of my ziplock bags forever. I also reuse plastic containers that have lids - they are great for storing hardware. To me, it seems crazy to buy something that you already have. The bride used to call me a pack rat, but when something broke on a Saturday night, I would more often then not have something that would fix it, at least temporarily.
Ive put two mowers by the street for someone to pick up and repair or use the parts, within a half hour of them out there BOOM there gone! Makes me feel good someone is going to "tinker" Then I'll go and buy a good used one someone pulled from the garbage, put 50 bucks into, and selling for 100 bucks....... PERFECT! The mower I have now I bought from a guy that does just that, power lawn equipment in three huge metal roofed pole barns and more out in the open, I gladly paid 100 bucks, he earned my respect, what he does is cool!
The head of Green Peace said plastic isn't recyclable at any kind of useful rate and winds up in the ocean. He said it is better in a landfill. I've been tossing plastic and glass in the trash ever since our city stopped doing curbside recycling pickup. There's a private company that picks up recycling for something like $20 a month with twice a month collections. It's a scam all right! I keep all my aluminum, iron and steel to recycle at the scrap metal place. About once a year it pays enough to cover a pizza but not a large pizza. Only cardboard and paper are still accepted the dumpster where we dump our recycling. When you think about it, us in the old car hobby have been recycling all our lives, well before it became cool.
It's interesting to see what people do as a "side hustle." I have a friend who works for Ruger, yes, that Ruger. He had an heirloom family grandfather clock that quit. He figured he had nothing to lose, so he went deep into the mechanism, found the problem, and fixed it. He found that he enjoyed working on mechanical clocks, and the last I knew, he was turning work away because he still had his day job. He's probably retired now, so he's likely doing clocks more or less full-time.
There are a couple of ways to view the private jets. I tend to like them, because they are carrying the movers and shakers that bring gobs of money to the SW Florida area. Every winter they put on a "Wine auction" that raises money for a Children's Hospital. Among the items that were donated by the visiting well-heeled, was an around-the-world cruise (First-class of course) another cruise to Bali, Use of private jets, a new Ferrari, and use of private yachts. Oh - They also auction off some crazy expensive wines too. The "wine auction" raised about $28,000,000 for the hospital. I can live with the jets.
I don’t have any issue with the jets either; those folks (at least the entertainers) earned it and many pay it back. Now, when politicians and ‘climate experts’ all fly private to a conference that could have been done on Zoom, that accomplishes little other than signal virtue… Patrick
Bought this Sears Craftsman mower brand new about 25 years ago. Box barely fit in a 64 Skylark's trunk, (to keep this Buick related ). Guys on the store's loading dock couldn't believe that. Had the carb redone about 5 years ago. Later that summer, the discharge chute spring disintegrated in my back yard, which spewed clippings everywhere. With Sears out of business by then, I was faced with tossing a perfectly running mower out....or MacGyvering a fix. My first unconventional repair was repurposing a vinyl Hazmat Placard and some duct tape. Lasted until the following spring. This is the second or third fix. I now mulch the clippings back into the soil. Doesn't need to look good, just do its job.
