Jun. 07, 2003 - 17:04 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

It Grows And Grows

Not a government project I think, but it might as well be. Support your paper/plastics manufacturers.

When I was a kid packaging was fairly simple, meat wrapped in butcher paper and tied with twine, pickles and liver in those little waxy cardboard containers, bread in waxy wraps as was butter in our town, milk in reusable bottles, vegetables in cans, but for the most part it all went into one or more paper sack to carry home.

But nowadays it seems that everything is wrapped in plastic, in at least one box and if the agglomerate is heavy enough stowed into double plastic bags to take out.

Small electric, electronic or china things are often packed, wrapped in plastic surrounded by many pieces of thick cardboard, and/or plastic peanuts and stuffed in heavy cardboard boxes. I think that packaged that way a product might survive a fifty foot drop onto cement.

Purchases of large items often are packed in all of the before and then crated, boxed, relocked once again.

When the weight of the packing equals or outweighs the product it is ready to be sold. (Floor models are deceiving of course -- they are out on the floor, bare naked).

Small items are packed in cardboard with a heavy transparent plastic cover - not to protect the product you see, but to prevent shoplifting -- but the merchant does not remove all that armor -- after much labor and cursing it comes off at home, then goes into the good ol' waste basket.

Then to add to the volume of junk there are the reams of slick, thick junk mail that comes in such large amounts, not to mention the inserts in our monthly bills. Then our daily newspaper often weighs pounds - Sunday's especially.

Our kitchen wastebasket keeps getting larger as time goes by, but not fast enough it seems. I keep crushing gallon milk jugs and flattening boxes etc. and then tamping the trash down in the basket. There seems to be an unending train of trash bags from our apartment to the dumpster. Trash, what would we do without it ? Don't ask !

I guess that no matter the condition of our economy, the packing, bagging and boxing industries will be the last to go under.

And the mountain of trash Grows And Grows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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