Years ago, after a family camping trip, we stopped at a café for Lunch on our way home. My father, my Brother and I all saw Sticky Date Pudding on the menu and decided to order it as desert.
It was the most amazing Sticky Date Pudding we had ever had, it was the right balance of moist and dry, the caramel sauce was just the right balance of sweet, salt and tart without being decadent and the date was just the right consistency, not rubbery but with just the right consistency.
We asked the waiter about it and they told the chef. The chef came out to give us the recipe and pulled out a Tinned Pudding. All he had done was cracked the tin, poured it out and put a scoop of vanilla gelato on the side.
I remember one of our dogs got mixed puppies too. All the same father but apparently genes can jump back to the original breeds our breed came from (poodle pointer, and we got a few pointer pups). Very rare, and a financial loss :)
Nivea Cream used to come in aluminum cans, then they changed to plastic. Recently they announced that they would come back to aluminum. We can still buy in plastic, though. I think it depends on the market.
Not only that, they advertised recycling to push public opinion that it was okay to switch to plastic, because plastic is recyclable. But they didn’t tell us, it’s never going to be economicaly viable to recycle plastic toothpaste tubes.
Yeah, but those metal tubes were awful. I have been brushing my teeth with Tom’s of Maine for decades, and I remember how much I hated those metal tubes. They always split open weeks before the tube was empty and then they’d leak and make a mess and I inevitably wasted a lot of product. When Tom finally sold to whatever corp and they switched over to the plastic tubes that don’t leak and let me use all the toothpaste I paid for, I danced a little jig.
Your comment made me have a flashback to my dad getting irritated at me for squeezing the middle of the toothpaste tube.
You’re only supposed to squeeze the far end of a metal tube – pushing product from the very end to the opening. Then as it gets empty you fold/roll up the flat bit at the end. You can even even buy “wringers” designed to assist with that.
But it’s not that simple. Back then no one recycled the can and all too many wouldn’t now. The can itself was heavier and not as effective. Plastic truly is a wonder material for packaging / it does a better job of keeping things fresh, is more convenient, and saving that weight, saving the energy going into making a can, saving the weight for shipping, is all a benefit of a plastic. We don’t have anything that works nearly as well
We all need to face the idea that convenience items like pudding probably shouldn’t be sold at all, especially with how easy instant pudding is
The group think around here is so crazy. Should we be using less single use plastic, especially the thin films? Absolutely. But the environmental impacts of mining all that metal and making all that glass to replace plastic with, plus the added energy for transporting the heavier packages and the cost of increased spoilage and product lost to dented cans and broken bottles, dwarfs the negative impact of the plastic replacements.
Also, I haven’t seen enough research on where environmental plastic comes from. While they’re are some benefits to just using less plastics, less packaging where we can, it would be much better to focus on the larger sources
Realistically what I’ve seen for larger sources of microplastics is:
industrial waste
tire dust
clothing
I already have a lint trap on my washer outlet and see there are a few filters meant to trap much of the manmade fibers that come off in the wash, to dispose of in the trash rather than back into the environment with treated wastewater. I have no idea whether that would actually be helpful but the filters aren’t that expensive, and it’s one of the few options under my control.
Increased standards on industrial waste cleanup are always a good idea. However a lot of this may be in undeveloped countries
If laundry is a significant source of micro plastics in the environment, we need to figure that out and add filters or something
We really really need to figure out something with tire dust, since it will continue to get worse as more people can afford personal transportation. I did read one article about filtering runoff near roads making a big difference but it was light on details and I’ve only seen something like that once
I actually work in the wastewater industry and from what I’m reading, a properly functioning sewage treatment plant already captures a very high proportion of microplastics. This widely cited study noted above 98% removal efficiency at one plant.
We’re already at approaching 2 log (99%) removal without actually trying to. It doesn’t seem improbable to me that with a few relatively modest tweaks to the system we could get 3 log removal (99.9%). Getting to 4 or 5 log removal is likely where things will get really expensive and challenging. But for now, a 2-3 log removal is probably good enough to focus on other sources like tire fragments/dust that typically pass directly to receiving waters with no treatment at all.
I misread that typeface, “a hit” really tried to be “shit” and it went from mildly interesting to meme material really quick. The s in always might have played a part
mildlyinteresting
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