OPINION: Ouch that hurts!

With all the kafuffle about re-cycling plastic, I never hear anyone harking back to the days when it was being introduced into everyday life for the very first time.
I can remember them putting a plastic bucket in front of a large lorry on TV and showing, after the lorry had driven backwards and forwards over it a couple of times, that it was undamaged. Just think, the programme presenter enthused, we could buy a bucket or other essential household items and they would last for the rest of our life.
Thinking about it all these years later it was never going to work selling products that would never need replacing, but in those post war days of drabness and clanking metal buckets, we eagerly bought into the dream.
The manufacturers had more sense though, and I’ve never owned a bucket, bowl or anything else made of plastic that didn’t need replacing after a couple of years normal wear and tear, let alone a lorry running over it!

The same can’t be said for plastic packaging. They seem quite happy to make that practically indestructible.

I know it’s a leap from indestructible buckets to cucumbers, but a few years later, again on TV, they were hailing the breakthrough of sealing cucumbers in tight plastic skins. It would keep them fresh for weeks, which meant they’d be more readily available all year round. Growers, especially the Dutch, found it very exciting.
Putting this subject in context, when I was growing up in the fifties, cucumber, a seasonal food and only available for a few weeks in the summer was classed as a luxury food in our street.
Of course it never occurred to us that packaged that way cucumbers aren’t actually fresh by the time we get them. A three week old cucumber is a three week old cucumber and we all know vegetables keep losing goodness the longer they’re kept.

Oops. Methinks progress has turned full circle and is now biting us on the ass.