Jugged

Every trip to the grocery store dismays me. Single-use plastic is everywhere, in every aisle. We carry all that plastic home and try to recycle it or just throw it in the trash. 

Do we really need this wasteful junk? Landfills are full of it, creating great hills that alter the landscape. Much of it isn’t even put into a trash receptacle so it litters beaches in every remote part of the oceans. Bits and pieces of it mar the landscape. It collects on fences and litters even the gravel road that leads me home. Sea creatures ingest it or become entangled in it and die.  Whales that wash up dead on beaches are always found with stomachs full of plastic – 15 pounds of it, 80 pounds of it, 22 kilograms of it, on and on.

No wonder a grocery aisle appalls me! That’s why I’m going to war on single-use plastic. 

The first plastic I’m attacking is laundry detergent, both liquid and pod, packaged in big plastic jugs.

Is it really easier to lift that heavy jug and pour some liquid into the lid before emptying the lid’s contents into the washing machine? Or is it easier to scoop granular detergent and dump it into the machine? Does the liquid really distribute more easily in water, thus avoiding clumps of un-dissolved powder when the washer finishes its cycle? In my sixty-some years of doing laundry I’ve never had that happen, and I’ve managed to use powdered detergent packaged in cardboard boxes the whole time. 

Although I thought the plastic measuring cup in every box of it was a terrible waste, for several years I used Arm and Hammer, which I could find at only the Kroger stores in my town. Then, shockingly, even Arm & Hammer quit making powdered detergent. Now there is none.

The amount of plastic contained in these jugs is staggering. These jugs aren’t sold in just one store in my town. Every one of a dozen grocery stores has an aisle just like this one. Everybody in town is buying these jugs, not just once, but again and again. Multiply that by every city in the United States and you will have enough detergent jugs to build a jug Pike’s Peak.

There’s no good reason for consumers to accept detergent in plastic jugs.  We should demand powdered detergent packaged in cardboard boxes.  We should hold the manufacturers responsible their role in plastic devastation. Let’s see if the consumer is always right.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

Convenience

Convenience – how we love it! We pursue it and snatch it up at the earliest opportunity. Many of us make our lives so convenient (and sedentary) that in order to get any exercise we have to join fitness centers where we can use machines that produce nothing.

“Working out,” is what it’s called. It seems like “acting out,” in the old sense of pretending to be or do something on a stage. If that comparison is valid, “working out” must mean that one is pretending to work. Is an underlying implication that physical effort is beneath the person who “works out?” No, this has nothing to do with snobbery. It’s just that modern life places most of us in positions that are totally convenient and require no physical effort from us. Yet we know that our bodies were designed to be used, and that exercise is essential to keeping our them in good order. That’s probably why apartment complexes and businesses offer free gyms and why there are many for-profit health clubs.

This scheme of “working out” seems to produce a great deal of wasted energy. What if all the exercise machines were built or retrofitted to harness this wasted energy as electricity? Just imagine that every exercise bike and treadmill was hooked to a generator. The wattage harvested would not be insignificant.

If every machine were designed to harvest energy, “working out” would become just plain old “working.” Perhaps even the vocabulary would change. Instead of bragging that one ran twenty miles on the elliptical machine or squatted three hundred pounds, one could say, “I generated 60 watts of electricity this morning.”

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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The Customer Is Always Right, Right?

“The customer is always right,” is a traditional motto for businesses in the United States. What the customer wants is what he gets, at least that’s how it used to be.

But today things have changed. It’s the stockholder who is always right, not the customer. Businesses don’t care about the customer now; they care only about the bottom lines on their financial statements. 

Here is a recent example: Baker’s Chocolate used to offer an eight-ounce package of baking chocolate containing eight individually wrapped one ounce squares. Each square had a groove down the middle, making it easier for the cook to use half an ounce, if needed.

In 2013, everything changed. The package contents went from eight ounces to four ounces. Moreover, the individually wrapped one-ounce packages disappeared and were replaced by a single four- ounce bar of baking chocolate. The product has shrunk and was now less convenient, but its price did not change.

I’ve noticed the shrinkage trend for several years. Who else remembers that coffee once was sold in one-pound tin cans that opened with a key so the lid could be replaced? Who else remembers the lovely aroma that came when one turned the key, releasing the pressurized seal? Somewhere along the line coffee was sold in plastic bags, which happened to weigh just 12 ounces, a 25-percent reduction.

Any grocery shopper who is paying attention has seen these sneaky weight reductions occurring in almost every kind of food products. Usually we accept these changes without much protest, but the changes to Baker’s Chocolate produced a firestorm of home baker complaints. We were so incensed that the venerable New York Times ran an article* reporting that a Kraft spokesperson claimed that “Our consumers have told us that they prefer this size over the larger size because the majority of our Baker’s recipes call for four ounces or less. The easy-break bar makes it faster to melt and easier to break apart.”

Kraft‘s spokesperson must think we are fools. If so many of “our customers” are pleased, where are their voices. The only ones speaking up are the unhappy ones. The customer, sad to say, is no longer always right. The Baker’s Chocolate package is still four ounces.

*Halving the Portion, but Not the Price, June 22, 2013, The New York Times.

Copyright 2019 by Shirley Domer

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