[LuvShepherds]

My grocery store started packaging some vegetables in cardboard which gets soggy and the food rots inside of it because you can’t see it. There must be a better way that can satisfy everyone and keeps food from spoiling or getting stale, like cereal or bread.

 

[banzai555]

Dunno if anyone on here watches Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, but he did a piece last year about single-use plastics and how companies have put the onus on the consumer to recycle plastics, so that WE feel bad when we don't (or in my case, being in rural Montana, CAN'T) recycle...when really the companies need to take responsibility and start using alternatives to plastic packaging. I HATE how prolific it is. I am trying as much as possible to grow my own food and stop relying on plastic-wrapped stuff, but it's still nearly impossible to come home from a grocery trip without plastic.

Luckily here in western MT the tap water tastes pretty good. I'm on the city system. I'm wary of wells because of all the agricultural runoff, all those pesticides gotta go somewhere...but I used to live in Fort Stockton, TX, and the city water was absolutely disgusting. As in, completely undrinkable. I had 3 Nalgene bottles that I would bring with me to my office every day, where we had a Culligan machine, and I filled 'em up and brought 'em home, lol.

Personally, I haven't had a single-use plastic water bottle in years. Maybe over a decade. I use my Nalgenes, which, granted, are plastic, but they last a good long time.

I still remember the days when cereal didn't come inside a plastic bag inside the box. It was just in the box. With a toy inside.

 

[WNGD]

Dunno if anyone on here watches Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, but he did a piece last year about single-use plastics and how companies have put the onus on the consumer to recycle plastics, so that WE feel bad when we don't (or in my case, being in rural Montana, CAN'T) recycle...when really the companies need to take responsibility and start using alternatives to plastic packaging. I HATE how prolific it is. I am trying as much as possible to grow my own food and stop relying on plastic-wrapped stuff, but it's still nearly impossible to come home from a grocery trip without plastic.

Luckily here in western MT the tap water tastes pretty good. I'm on the city system. I'm wary of wells because of all the agricultural runoff, all those pesticides gotta go somewhere...but I used to live in Fort Stockton, TX, and the city water was absolutely disgusting. As in, completely undrinkable. I had 3 Nalgene bottles that I would bring with me to my office every day, where we had a Culligan machine, and I filled 'em up and brought 'em home, lol.

Personally, I haven't had a single-use plastic water bottle in years. Maybe over a decade. I use my Nalgenes, which, granted, are plastic, but they last a good long time.

I still remember the days when cereal didn't come inside a plastic bag inside the box. It was just in the box. With a toy inside.

Inside the cereal box, the liner looks more like waxed paper but is actually a plastic. Not every municipality recycles it.

That's one of the problems in our very comprehensive recycling programs. One day they take virtually all plastic, then they don't take black colored. One month they take styrofoam including what comes under your wrapped fresh meat, then they don't. Any paper with a speck of food attached ruins the batch.

Then there's the recycled electronics that end up in Asia stripped down and leaching back into rivers or the millions of pounds of plastic that ends up being burned overseas....

An apartment building camera caught a contracted recycling company throwing recycling in with the garbage and sent a camera crew to investigate at the company. They tried to say they were separating it later

 

[LuvShepherds]

Dunno if anyone on here watches Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, but he did a piece last year about single-use plastics and how companies have put the onus on the consumer to recycle plastics, so that WE feel bad when we don't (or in my case, being in rural Montana, CAN'T) recycle...when really the companies need to take responsibility and start using alternatives to plastic packaging. I HATE how prolific it is. I am trying as much as possible to grow my own food and stop relying on plastic-wrapped stuff, but it's still nearly impossible to come home from a grocery trip without plastic.

Luckily here in western MT the tap water tastes pretty good. I'm on the city system. I'm wary of wells because of all the agricultural runoff, all those pesticides gotta go somewhere...but I used to live in Fort Stockton, TX, and the city water was absolutely disgusting. As in, completely undrinkable. I had 3 Nalgene bottles that I would bring with me to my office every day, where we had a Culligan machine, and I filled 'em up and brought 'em home, lol.

Personally, I haven't had a single-use plastic water bottle in years. Maybe over a decade. I use my Nalgenes, which, granted, are plastic, but they last a good long time.

I still remember the days when cereal didn't come inside a plastic bag inside the box. It was just in the box. With a toy inside.

Nalgene is supposed to be safe. I use a Contigo stainless. It keeps the water cold and it always tastes fresh.

 

[jarn]

I use Nalgenes too. Great for hiking, hold more water, are sturdy but not too heavy (though sometimes for packpacking I use the soft sided ruffwear water bottles if I’m trying to gram weenie). But I use nalgenes around home too

 

[Zeppy]

I use Nalgenes too. Great for hiking, hold more water, are sturdy but not too heavy (though sometimes for packpacking I use the soft sided ruffwear water bottles if I’m trying to gram weenie). But I use nalgenes around home too

Had to google gram weenie… I was not disappointed! Lol

 

[car2ner]

Since we live and travel in our motorhome, I keep a Berkey filter in my kitchen. We only buy individual bottles if we are desperately thirsty and I didn't bring our own Yeti bottles. I even reuse plastic juice bottles as dog toys. Granted it doesn't really reduce plastics.

 

[Sunsilver]

Imperfect solutions, for example who were the short sighted people in the pacific northwest that insisted stores could only sell plastic bags and they had to be heavy duty plastic bags. Sure the bags say "use 150 time" but honestly, the got nasty and broken after only 2 or 3 uses.

That's just silly! The reusable bags we are having to use now are cloth, and I've yet to have one wear out, though I do wash them now and then when they get dirty.

Back when we were using plastic, I would keep my bags and reuse them. I think I still have a couple in my car that haven't worn out, even though it's been more than a year since the stores stopped using them.

 

[car2ner]

I've had cloth bags die on me, especially the insulated ones. But I'm talking about the heavy plastic bags I was forced to buy last summer. Some of those bags had dings and holes in them after the first trip home from the store. They were dirty after two or three trips.
I have no issues, with cloth

 

[jarn]

That's just silly! The reusable bags we are having to use now are cloth, and I've yet to have one wear out, though I do wash them now and then when they get dirty.

Back when we were using plastic, I would keep my bags and reuse them. I think I still have a couple in my car that haven't worn out, even though it's been more than a year since the stores stopped using them.

We use the cloth produce bags too, have for ages. That or I just don't bag stuff like peppers and broccoli, which appalls Toby. Like he even eats vegetables!

 

[xthine]

“What solutions have you found to reduce the environmental impact of your dog?”

Feeding raw to help reduce the amount poop bags we have to use because stools are lot as voluminous (less waste).
On hikes I’ve switched to carrying a Stasher container for Josie’s treats, instead of using a plastic sandwich bag. When I do have to use a plastic sandwich bag I keep it until there are holes in it.
I use a soft flask for trail running, so that’s what we use to carry water when we’re hiking. The amount of plastic water bottles we pick up on the trails can be astounding at times.
We use a Berkey to filter water from the tap, so we have not needed to buy bottled water for some time.
When it comes to gear, I try to buy quality products that will hold up for years, so less have to go in the landfill. Any gear or toys I want to upgrade but still have life in them, I donate to the local humane society.

I use “Earth Rated” dog poop bags, but now I’m considering switching to these:

Amazon.com: GreenPolly Pet Waste and Dog Poop Bags, 250 Count, Made with 100% Renewed Material, Durable, Purple, Fits in Standard Park Dispensers : Pet Supplies

Buy GreenPolly Pet Waste and Dog Poop Bags, 250 Count, Made with 100% Renewed Material, Durable, Purple, Fits in Standard Park Dispensers on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

www.amazon.com

Are there dog wipes made from recycled material?

 

[banzai555]

We use the cloth produce bags too, have for ages. That or I just don't bag stuff like peppers and broccoli, which appalls Toby. Like he even eats vegetables!

lol, I never bag produce. so the cashier always looks at me in some consternation when I dump a bunch of loose apples or potatoes on the belt.

 

[jarn]

lol, I never bag produce. so the cashier always looks at me in some consternation when I dump a bunch of loose apples or potatoes on the belt.

You and me both! Toby has given up getting me to bag things.

 

[Pemi]

I think feeding raw has a much larger actual environmental impact than kibble. Unless of course you are rearing and butchering your own pasture or home-fed animals.

Main thing is there are too many people although nobody really wants to think about it. We went from under 2 billion when my grandmother was born to 8 billion now and that's not without impact to the planet. For the vast majority (all but the last 200 years or so) there are about 1 billion humans on this earth. Mind boggling when you think about what a billion is.

We are living in a golden age of luxury right now- at least us in the first world. Ease, comfort, long lives, time to devote to hobbies like dogs. People complain about being anxious but life is soo easy if you think about what it was like just 200 years ago! Much less 1,000 years past. I don't know when the age of ease will end but Earth does have a carrying capacity and the ways it reaches that are not pretty or fun for the organism that is past its carrying capacity.

 

[techinstructor]

Pemi hit the nail on the head. There are just too many people for the available resources and the problem keeps growing with the population.

 

[Sunsilver]

I came across this in my computer files: Changes folks, it's going to happen, whether we want it to or not.

As someone who's always loved horses, I've often wished things hadn't changed.

My father was a young man during this part of the 20th century. He drove a horse and cart to High School, and when he got his first car, it had to be put up on blocks during the winter, as it couldn't deal with snowy winter roads!

My father's first car, a 1929 Model A Ford:

 

[selzer]

Wow. There are 260million+ autos in the US alone. Now the horse, that is an amazing critter to be sure, takes about an acre of land to support. And that does not count the fields of hay that must be harvested to get the beasts through the winter. But whatever. Can you imagine if all those 260million+ auto owners needed an extra acre to support their horse? It's a lot of land. And all those critters displaced for all those horses. Talk about a massive eco-change. And most of us couldn't make it to work on a horse, because a horse can't go 100 miles+ day in and day out. So we would have to have trains and places to store our horses while we are using the fuels to get to work by bus or train. And buggies need tires too. Buggies aren't cheap I hear. Be that as it may be. I love horses and often think I would like to live in a more agrarian time. But I live now. I actually live in the sticks and have an acre. But a horse won't get me to work every day. I used to ride my bike sometimes, when work was only 18 miles away, but I can't even do that now. And someone would be complaining about the road apples, and the methane produced when the animals break wind. Do you know there are folks out there putting plastic bags on their cows butts? How crazy is that? Herbivors make the best fertilizer where carnivor droppings tend to kill anything green. Sigh. We hear that there are too many bodies on this planet, and yet places like Germany were importing migrant workers because their population growth cannot support manufacturing.

I guess the good news is that so many folks are in a place where they can stop spending all their resources on surviving day to day, and can spend their energy worrying about how many folks are on the planet and how they are ruining it. It's too bad that most of the options they come up with to battle that, hurt the folks that are in that first group struggling to make ends meet and provide for their families.

 

[Zeppy]

I came across this in my computer files: Changes folks, it's going to happen, whether we want it to or not.

As someone who's always loved horses, I've often wished things hadn't changed.

My father was a young man during this part of the 20th century. He drove a horse and cart to High School, and when he got his first car, it had to be put up on blocks during the winter, as it couldn't deal with snowy winter roads!

View attachment 597983

My father's first car, a 1929 Model A Ford:

View attachment 597982

Ok but the real question is………
Who the heck is naming their horse Dobbin?!
🤣

great pic of your dad and his car!

 

[selzer]

Ok but the real question is………
Who the heck is naming their horse Dobbin?!
🤣

great pic of your dad and his car!

I think in the Harry Potter series, Professor Treelawny refered to the centaur, Firenzy as Dobbin. And after looking it up it makes sense that the house elf, Dobby was called that.

 

[Zeppy]

I think in the Harry Potter series, Professor Treelawny refered to the centaur, Firenzy as Dobbin. And after looking it up it makes sense that the house elf, Dobby was called that.

That’s some good HP trivia!