| The Breakroom > The Water Cooler |
| The green thing |
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| foozer:
I hated the chore of lining the garbage can with old newspapers as a kid, perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea. Robert |
| sparky961:
I hate to quote from "The Living Years" (Mike and the Mechanics), but it's true that "every generation blames the one before". I think it's also true that every generation tries to make things better for the next. Odd. I promise not to blame the generation before mine, as long as "you" (being of that generation) promise to do what you can to help "us" solve the current problems we face. Fair? |
| S. Heslop:
Keep in mind that supermarkets are only selling you plastic bags now because plastic is getting too expensive to just give away. By greenwashing the practise they can get praise for it too. The only reason we're curbing our excess and doing the Green thing is because it's both a marketing bullet-point and because the greener alternatives are simply becoming cheaper as resources run out. |
| AdeV:
--- Quote from: Scuba1 on January 20, 2012, 05:58:37 PM --- She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day. --- End quote --- FWIW - Most men, in my experience, either use an electric razor or one of those Gillette Mach 95 things that takes disposable heads. Not quite as green as the original safety razors, and definitely not as green (or red!) as a proper cut-throat razor. Milk bottles are still widely used in the UK - and recycled just as they always were. Pop bottles less so, but that's more to do with the change from glass to plastic. I asked a shop keeper about that once, he said the problem with glass bottles is too many kids using them as weapons... but then, I DO live in a rather dubious area. As for pens - when I went to school, fountain pens were still widely used. Indeed, I was issued with one on my first day! As I recall, they all leaked, fairly continuously, and especially if brought into close proximity with a white shirt. And those cartridges weren't particularly green, being a lump of plastic which got thrown away when empty. Or, if you were really keen, refilled (messily!) by hand from a bottle of Quink. I have to say that the conversion to ball-point pens was a revelation - although even they will leak if provoked. It's certainly true that we've become a throwaway society, and most of that is down to cheap imported consumer goods. Ironically, that's also what killed the manufacturing and electronics repair sectors of the economy. It also means we can pretty much all afford a fancy mobile phone, a big TV, DAB radios, etc. |
| WillieL:
--- Quote from: AdeV on February 15, 2012, 08:35:49 AM --- As for pens - when I went to school, fountain pens were still widely used. Indeed, I was issued with one on my first day! As I recall, they all leaked, fairly continuously, and especially if brought into close proximity with a white shirt. And those cartridges weren't particularly green, being a lump of plastic which got thrown away when empty. Or, if you were really keen, refilled (messily!) by hand from a bottle of Quink. I have to say that the conversion to ball-point pens was a revelation - although even they will leak if provoked. --- End quote --- Oh my! That certainly brings back memories. It only reminds me of just how old I am now. :poke: :D I get a kick out of how quickly people are ready to get rid of their hybrid vehicles when they find out how much it is going to cost them to replace that 300 lb battery when it is at the end of it's useful life - or one of the half-dozen electronic control units suddenly fail. Some how the "green" in their wallet takes precedence over being "green" in the end. :loco: |
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