Is Recycling the BEST Option?

[ChickensRDinos]

While I'm not a big fan of government control we need to insist that packaging be re-purposable as opposed to recyclable. Those of you who are older remember when fruits and vegetables came in mesh bags, not plastic.



Re-useable for sure. When I was a kid we used to take the finer meshed ones, cut them down to size and thread a string through the mesh to make a drawstring and use them to carry our marbles (Do little boys even play marbles anymore?) and "stuff". Little boys always had stuff back than. Pretty rocks, dead beetles, bits of string..., but I digress.

While on the subject of kids; They're great at re-purposing. Right after Christmas we used to go all around the neighborhood and pick up all of the discarded Christmas trees, haul them to a big empty lot and build "Forts". We got about a month worth of fun out of them until our dads decided that they were a fire hazard.

Anyway, more food for thought. It's time for me let someone else have a turn.

I still see those bags a lot. Mostly bulk fruits and root vegetables.

My grandmother also makes reusable fruit and veggie bags for me. These are actually made out of the scraps of yarn that she has left over from other projects that are too short to make anything new. I actually think they end up really pretty with random colors and patterns. Easy to wash and no plastic.







Here are a few free patterns if anyone crochets:

http://www.purlbee.com/the-purl-bee/2009/9/3/whits-knits-crocheted-linen-grocery-tote.html

http://diyods.blogspot.com/2010/04/crocheted-produce-bag.html

 

[kuntrygirl]

While I'm not a big fan of government control we need to insist that packaging be re-purposable as opposed to recyclable. Those of you who are older remember when fruits and vegetables came in mesh bags, not plastic. Re-useable for sure. When I was a kid we used to take the finer meshed ones, cut them down to size and thread a string through the mesh to make a drawstring and use them to carry our marbles (Do little boys even play marbles anymore?) and "stuff". Little boys always had stuff back than. Pretty rocks, dead beetles, bits of string..., but I digress. While on the subject of kids; They're great at re-purposing. Right after Christmas we used to go all around the neighborhood and pick up all of the discarded Christmas trees, haul them to a big empty lot and build "Forts". We got about a month worth of fun out of them until our dads decided that they were a fire hazard. Anyway, more food for thought. It's time for me let someone else have a turn.

I still see those bags a lot. Mostly bulk fruits and root vegetables. My grandmother also makes reusable fruit and veggie bags for me. These are actually made out of the scraps of yarn that she has left over from other projects that are too short to make anything new. I actually think they end up really pretty with random colors and patterns. Easy to wash and no plastic. Here are a few free patterns if anyone crochets: http://www.purlbee.com/the-purl-bee/2009/9/3/whits-knits-crocheted-linen-grocery-tote.html http://diyods.blogspot.com/2010/04/crocheted-produce-bag.html

I crotched a long time ago when I was about 8 years old and never have since. I wonder if I forgot how to do it? I enjoyed doing that.

 

[oldrooster]

ChickensRDinos it must be very different there than where I am in Indiana you rarely find potatoes in bags like that, when you do it looks as if they are left overs from another supplier because the potatoes are a lot lower in quality. onions yes, any other fruits or veggies no, unless it's citrus fruit, and even then it's hard at times to find bags of those items, (lemons and limes are for short periods of the winter)

 

[ChickensRDinos]

I know I have a big bag of purple onions right now that came like that and yams and some oranges. I don't generally eat potatoes I can't even remember how they usually come. I also buy ginger and garlic in medium sized mesh bags like that.

I buy a lot of things at Costco that come in cardboard boxes. I like that because I can compost it.

 

[oldrooster]

Again, not trolling. Just stating my opinion. Recycling is not the best option. Reusing is far more energy and resource efficient. Can't sew? Learn, it's not that difficult. Don't have time to cook? Why, because you both work? Perhaps if you learn to sew, and grow and cook your own food from scratch you'll save enough that the second income won't be necessary. Just because something's broken doesn't mean that it needs to go into the trash. Try to repair it. What have you got to lose? If you can't it's still just broken, and that's what you started out with. If you can patch it together, you win!

The city of Austin, Texas was recently complaining that the recycling program was costing the city millions of dollars a year to operate. That doesn't sound very efficient to me.

In a way I read an article years ago in Reminisce magazine where a gentleman was remembering when he was a child in the era just prior to the depression his father moved the family to the country and rented a farm house (the neighbor bought out the next door farm to expand his and rented the house and lawn since he had no need for it) apparently he figured between car fare to his city job he was still ahead by paying less in rent and his children where not as prone to get in trouble with the wrong crowd and they where able to save money by having a garden and a milk goat. Well the kids wanted a treat while off school for the summer so the mother had an idea to keep the kids busy the last few weekends of the school year walking the county roads and 2 lane highway near by for pop bottles. she cleaned and sanitized them and bottled her own pop, and they had enough for nearly the whole summer drinking one bottle a day. I figured reading between the lines it also provided the family more than likely more money than they spent for ingredients when they redeemed the empty bottles and the mother could better manage the kids without need of punishment by simply asking if they wanted to continue misbehaving and losing the right to have a soda that day or the next.

 

[OldGuy43]

OldGal and I were talking about re-purposing yesterday and our "chicken concern" (I heard that phrase on the BBC's farm series and just like it much better than "chicken business")... Anyway, almost everything in the run started out as something else. The lumber is mostly from pallets with some "roadside treasures" thrown in. We did have to buy some hardware (screws and such) and some of the fencing was new, but for the most part it's all re-purposed materials.



Admittedly, not real pretty, but I live in a rural area, have no intrusive home owners association to worry about and neither the landlord or the chickens seem to mind.

 

[newfoundland]

I think we have to be more creative ChicknesRDinos. I don't want to labour the point but my mother-in-law, when a young married woman with a baby, lived in two rooms in a tenement house in the slumiest part of London, just after the First World War. She had no kitchen, water was collected from a tap two flights of stairs below, and the toilet shared by all the families in the house and in the small back yard. She cooked in one pan, on an open fire, and did her washing in a bowl on the scrubbed pine table. The only furniture they had was a table, two straight backed kitchen chairs, a chest of drawers and a bed. My father-in-law made a cot/crib for the baby out of off cuts of wood and ex-army canvas. He was unemployed in the 1920s and went everyday to London docks where men were taken on as day labourers. He wore his medals as ex-soldiers were more likely to be taken on. Despite being wounded and gassed on the Somme, he worked hard and bettered himself enough to eventually move his family out to their own home in the leafy suburbs.

I never knew a man more green fingered than my father-in-law, he could grow food in the tiniest and least promising of places. He always saved seeds from season to season and made his own plant food from horse manure, collected in the streets. The only pesticide he ever used was soapy water sprayed onto the plants.He and my mother-in-law tramped miles with their young family foraging in the hedgerows and made the best jam and preserves. Nothing grew that he didn't know if it was edible and they made the most amazing soups with hedgerow finds. Although poorly educated he was clever and resourceful. In those days better off families, on bank holidays, went for day trips to the very many open parklands around London. Father-in-law always scrimped and saved to make sure he had enough to hire a pony and trap for the day, fill it with oranges, and take the family off to one of these busy parks. He sold the oranges while the children played, thereby making a profit out of his family's day out. I am very proud of my parent in law, as I am of my own parents and I make sure my children and grandchildren understand the struggles their ancesters had, but they lived their lives with hope, courage, dignity and cheerfulness that I feel often puts us to shame.

 

[OldGuy43]

Newfoundland makes a good point. You don't even have to have a yard to grow your own:


Okay, so that's a TV show and a comedy besides, but it makes the point that you can grow stuff everywhere. (Well, everybody can't. Even with a farm, Mr. Douglas didn't have much luck) My grandparents had a lemon tree that grew in the house in a pot and produced lemons. As I said before, you can always find excuses for not trying.

If I've got you hooked here's the second half of the first episode of Green Acres:

 

[oldrooster]

and remember green acres is the place to be and farm living is the life for me!

 

[kuntrygirl]

and remember green acres is the place to be and farm living is the life for me!