Category: Unnecessary Plastic

Chilly Times

( 26 November 2020) The weather gets chillier, the new tiers cause tears and I continue, slowly, to build up food stocks; mitigating the shortages we will experience in January.

The government have fudged Xmas so that they cannot be accused of abolishing it (leading to all the train companies stopping their cheap tickets for the period). They will then blame us for hugging and snogging when the virus surges in January (though we won’t worry as we will all be in long queues outside the food shops brightly mumbling that “At least we’ve taken back control”

On a positive note I have discovered that you can recycle properly the annoying plastic holders they put around 4 packs of canned beer (and presumably other drinks as well). There is this nice company who will send you a label; you fill an envelope with the items and hand it in to a UPS agent (my local newsagent is one). Simple, only expense, if reusing a large envelope, is a bit of sticky tape. It also is better than mixed recycling because a firm who have a quantity of identical material can do something with it. Here is a link.

UK Shipping Label | Ring Recycle Me

I see that Mr Trump is slowly realising that he has to go away-however I do fear that his constant denigration, of what appears to be a slightly strange democratic system anyway is seeding the ground for an authoritarian uprising/downtreading.

Fortunately, he has not bombed Iran. Yet.

Let’s not forget that in 830 AD the Persians had invented algebra and how to solve quadratic equations. We were in the Dark ages.

So when someone said “Ull you’re late” this was chastisement of a tardy peasant.

In Persia when this was requested  the recipient would utter a loud, usually protracted, high-pitched, rhythmical sound especially as an expression of sorrow, joy, celebration, or reverence.

Here is an example

And there is always hope (this is a rare picture capturing the secret sun)

Are there two suns?
The sun always rises

Unnecessary Plastic (2){update}

(8 September 2020) Following on from last week’s thought I got a rapid reply from the supermarket. Unfortunately, it missed the point. However, to be fair I wrote back and further explained the issue and I then got a rapid and helpful reply- see below

(Dear Mr Fraser,

Thank you for your response.

Yes, this makes sense and is a good idea in my opinion so I appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

I can certainly pass this on to our pricing team so that it can be considered for implementation should there be a review of process in the future.

I apologise that I did not grasp the concept initially and would like to thank you once again for your feedback regarding this).

We will see what happens.

(4 September 2020) Apologies for the silence recently- not only have I been dumbstruck by the news (all of it) I have also been away from my PC.

Undecided what to focus my thoughts on I happened to buy some baked beans.

On the shelves were single cans and six packs which were much cheaper per tin. ((Without panicking my readers, I am slowly stocking up for the Brexit chaos in January). The tins were    wrapped in (unnecessary) plastic. See below the discard.

Unnecessary wrapping

In the same supermarket there are many “special offers” for example on beer where buying four specified individual bottles gives a cheaper overall price. They often offer a “discount” if you buy six bottles of wine etc.

At the till the machines recognises these offers and applies the saving. So why do they wrap baked beans in plastic? I have written to the supermarket and will share my answer.

While we wait here’s a picture of me on my holidays.

Golf and knitwear make a perfect combination

Plastic ?

(21 April 2020) Stumbling out of isolation and blinking in the harsh sun as I went on a search for marrowfat peas I started thinking about Jacob Rees-Mogg which was perturbing and one I will return to on another day. (We haven’t heard from him in a while, I hope he is all right).

I succeeded in my task at a local supermarket; thus, emboldened I went in search of tinned goods. They had tomatoes and baked beans (in separate tins). I bought some.

This is not interesting but the rant is about Unnecessary Packaging particularly Plastic.

The tomatoes were 30p each or four for a quid. All loose tins.

The beans were the same price but wrapped in quite strong plastic which was not recyclable so will be off to landfill.

The till, once it counted four tins of tomatoes, knocked 20p off my bill.

It could have done the same with the beans so there was no justification at all. One piece of plastic but it would only require 3,000 of them to pointlessly cover the pitch at Wembley (a football stadium for my continental readers).

The supermarket has over 450 stores so assuming all these baked beans are snapped up (- it was an attractive price) then this unnecessary wrapping would more than cover the football pitches of all the professional pitches in the UK. This is probably not right.

This was a small thought so to eke out my precious and diminishing supply of kittens here is a plant.