got me thinking...

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I responded to a discussion from a good mylot friend about garbage and recycling and it got me thinking. It's funny how everyone complains about those problems but products keep being sold with extra packaging, or even packaging that is really not needed. I thought back to when I was a kid.Mind you all this talks about no place for garbage or even recycling hadn't even started. But things made much more sense. Food in the stores was in bulk. Big bags of rice, sugar etc. People could take their own containers and the product would be weighted and put in the container. If not, they would be put in paper bags that were often reused many times at home. YOu could do this with almost everything. You wanted to buy wine? go to the store take your own bottle, they would fill it. YOu'd pay, and voila a very green solution. You wanted to buy chicken - forget about the packaged stuff - go to the specific store - take a container, buy the chicken. Or eggs, get your own container for the eggs... completely green. Even take out food. You would go to a take out restaurant, take your own container(s), and there you go, green again. Actually with a bonus because doses were always a bit bigger when we got our own containers. Ok I can see a few problem with this. Most of them being hygiene concerns - how long will that huge bag of rice or sugar or whatever will be there? What about rodents and bugs - but if we think about it the same problems exist in the big supermarkets today, it's not more complicated to chew on a paper bag of sugar than on a sack, a bin or anything that might be used. I think that it still would be a good idea to consider this and research better ways to do it... we seem to have evolved, but maybe we didn't we just added packaging LOL Still to this day I really don't like to go to a supermarket to buy meat unless they have a butcher's shop cutting my meat the way I want and in a way that I can see. ( have you noticed how nice the meat looks in all those neat trays in the refrigerator shelves, but when you get it home you open it and the underside is all brown and yucky?I've seen this at friend's houses and I don't like it.) Meanwhile, while not having programs like for example people buy paint, when they're finished ( within a limit of time ) whatever was leftover could be sent back to the store - I'm sure they would be able to use it - and it would be less waste. THings like that. I am sure I am not asking for the impossible, and many things would work so much better. In here the city collects garbage once a week - which surprised me at the beginning because back home they collected garbage every night - .Food garbage ( food, cat litter, etc things that basically can be composted ), recycling ( paper, plastic, etc ), and garbage ( all the things that can't be composted or can't be recycled). I am happy with it and must say that ever since they're started it I find myself hardly having any garbage at all ( I mean the one that has to go to the dumps no matter what ) MOst of what I have is the food garbage and the recycling. When I'm done sorting, the real garbage is minimal. But still, I look at the huge amounts of recyclables we have and think that there was no need for all that. Worse yet, are those programs really working. Are recyclables really being recycled? Correctly? Is the food garbage really being composted? At a risk of being considered a cynic, I don't trust politicians that much, neither the people running our cities and countries - they tend to lie LOL Still.... WOuld you buy from bulk food stores like the ones I mention? WOuld you take a container to a take out restaurant instead of using they're containers that will end up in the garbage?