Not driving to the mall and driving in circles to find a place to park is also a good way to avoid contributing to the green house gasses.

Styrofoam is generally not recycled and yet still widely used. The exceptions are the peanuts which can be reused for the purpose intended, but likely to end up in the trash bin and ultimately some landfill.

I’ve learned that it’s difficult to dispose of mattress sets. Most often, they’re landfilled. They take up a huge amount of space. The sales of mattresses is in the 10s of millions each year.

Teflon cookware is another source of pollution, based on solvents, deemed a carcinogen.

There are solutions in some areas, but quite limited across the country as a whole.

I hope no one get injured or killed this year by the eager shoppers. This Black Friday stuff has likely gotten out of hand.

It’s truly ridiculous. At the grocery a few weeks ago, I saw potatoes individually wrapped. Potatoes!!!

Costco now sells a tool to un-package items in that deadly sturdy plastic.

Salvation Army used to take mattresses and would pick them up but don’t know if they still do.
I hate the hard plastic covers on things. By the time I get the item open I have broken at least one nail and taken the skin off most of my knuckles.

Hemp, sawdust, grasses, recycled paper, and other things we used long before these new toxic products were created.

But is the de-plastic container tool encased in a plastic wrap?

The plastic wrap on the potatoes I see at Kroger is so you can microwave them in the plastic, something that you are advised not to do from many sources, since the fumes from overheated plastic wrap are poisonous.

A microwave proof glass container comes in handy for those.

Of course the tool is packaged in the deadly plastic! Crazy. I bought it though, just to prevent further injury as Twain has said.

…So everybody was waiting in line this morning at 4 a.m. at their favorite store, right? Right?

Oh.

I’m going to look for one when I go to Costco next week. Hadn’t seen it so will have to look. Thanks.

I detest that hard, sharp plastic. The irony is in buying a leatherman or pocketknife that comes packaged in it. Now how am I supposed to get the knife out when I bought the knife to open packages just like that?

I’ve learned that it’s difficult to dispose of mattress sets.

In the Washington DC area, there’s a group called A Wider Circle that collects household goods for folks moving from shelters to affordable housing. They are ALWAYS looking for mattress sets.

Perhaps there’s a similar group in your area.

Nb: Jane, “styrofoam” is misspelled in your entry.

Come on, we all know that, if hard pressed to come up with the most egregious example of America in decline, it would be Black Friday.

Mindless consumption is the bedrock of America culture, sure. But Black Friday takes it to depths that are so appallingly inane we struggle mightily just to come up with words to put it in perspective.

Here’s the best I can come up with:

Black Friday, an American ritual, occurs ever year in a world where:

•well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called “absolute poverty”
•Every year 18 million children die of hunger
•For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years
•Throughout the 1990′s more than 100 million children died from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could [have been] prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!
•The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you’ve entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.
•One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture
•The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world’s hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy
•Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion – a majority of humanity – live on less than $1 per day, while the world’s 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people. UNICEF
•3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
•In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
•The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
•One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
•Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
•In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
•Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide – a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
•About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age
•To satisfy the world’s sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.
•The assets of the world’s three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
•Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
•It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.

Enough said?

Now how am I supposed to get the knife out when I bought the knife to open packages just like that?

And if you use a screwdriver, machete or other implement to break into the package jail, you’ll probably stab yourself and require health care, which you can’t get either.

A double whammy!

Some toys are now packaged by actually screwing the toy into a box and then zip-typing it before the box is sealed. Crazy waste.

I wonder how many injuries have been caused by that stuff. There should be a class action lawsuit./snark

I’d sure like to see Black Friday repackaged as “Giving Friday.”

Folks could be encouraged to give — whether of time, goods or money — to worthwhile organizations. Instead of the web sites touting “the best Black Friday deals” and local tv stations covering folks who’ve been in line since 2 am, they could feature worthy causes that could use help.

Hell, they could have a whole weekend’s worth of programming just on that!

Black Friday is a corrupt corporate holiday that exploits regular people’s desire to keep up with the Joneses. I refuse to shop the day after thanksgiving. Period.

Thanks for this reminder, Jane. I’ve been trying to teach the kids to make choices when shopping for food based on packaging. The more packaging, the more processing, and the worse for one’s health let alone the environment and for the wallet.

A five-pound paper bag of flour is a lot of bread, for example, but it costs less than a fifth of store-bought bread and has no plastic wrapping. And the taste and texture are a vast improvement.

We also carry canvas bags now; I give my son a dime for each bag he loads at the grocery store, encourages him to remember to bring the bags. I’d rather spend the money on him than on plastic bags and crappy, unmotivated baggers.

If only electronics would come in less packaging; I think this is one area where consumers need to put pressure on manufacturers to be more green. The extruded foam is improving now that some manufacturers have changed to CFC-free gases for expanding the foam, but not all foam is “green.” We should be demanding plant-based products which can be recycled, probably going to take some of us participating in shareholder protests.

Was having a pleasant, cozy conversation online, including here at FDL, instead. My home brewed coffee beats anything I can get outside the home, anyway.

Didn’t buy anything online, either.

What’s wrong with me!

The big coffee chain is now using cardboard trays for their prepackaged food, instead of plastic. (The lid is still plastic, though.) I use them to dispose of trash, on the days when I buy a fruit/cheese tray.

Michigan State University is considering dropping it’s program in Classical studies but it’s Packaging Department is going gang busters.

I love shopping online. Have been Christmas shopping since April. Still not done but won’t get involved today.
There’s nothing wrong with you – no Black Friday shopping.

“Styrofoam” is a brand name; it’s actually used in crafting and in building insulation and it’s made using CFC-free processes. It is NOT used in packaging for food products.

It’s “expanded polystyrene foam” which is NOT made with CFC-free processes that is an environmental nightmare since gases used to expand the foam directly affect the ozone layer.

thank you. i cringe when i see folks buying a gazillion small water bottles in the store.

I especially like the individually plastic-wrapped prunes-in-a-tube. Because, you know, prunes suffer so from contact with one another.

Completely appropriate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/anntelnaes/

LOL haven’t seen that one. Too much.

Charbucks, I assume? Why anyone buys that inferior crap is beyond me. And they are ruining whatever positive branding that achieved by selling instant coffee. It seems like all the big brands are trying to compete with McDonald’s by offering cheaper stuff at the expense of quality.

I’ll stick to my home brew too.

Ah, but “Charbucks” has an iced Mocha that is wonderful. So does Peets for that matter.

Our city has outlawed plastic grocery-store and pharmacy bags as well as plastic containers for fast food. Try it in your community; the chain stores and fast-food outlets will fight like hell, but it really works. There’s lots less of that “American Beaty” plastic bag ballet in my neighborhood than there used to be.

Almost everyone brings canvas or string bags to my Safeway now, and the farmers’ market seems not to give out very many bags at all. We can make it happen in every town in America, if we want to.

Think globally, act locally.

Fixed and ty.

You make me laugh! Bruised prunes would be an affront on all that is holy.

Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is ready: “The WSJ’s Kim Strassel: CRU Emails Prove Global Warming is Fake”

I saw a clip of US Soldiers in Iraq celebrating Thanksgiving and they were given non alcholic wine in what looked like tall styrofoam glasses. Why weren’t they using real glasses which is washable and reusable?

I saw a clip on Dr Oz about the fast spreading bed bugs. I thought, when they deliever the new mattress they take away the old ones and are they spreading the bed bugs in this manner?

thinking back to the late 80′s when CD’s were re packaged – of course the recording industry said they were simply responding to the market and being good citizens but I am sure it came down to economics – it needs to happen on a more global basis soon – the next Bill Gates will be a gal or guy who makes it economically feasable to migrate to earth friendly packaging

The quality of the chocolate both use is not good enough (and both places overroast their coffee), IMO, although anything is better than the sugarwater mocha you get from McD’s.

No, if you want a good mocha, try local independent coffee houses. And the best iced mochas use some half/half at the end for body that is lost when the milk is not steamed. It makes a huge difference.

…and yeah, I admit a lot of people like Charbucks and Peet’s.

Maybe BO is serious about cleaning up DC.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street’s influence in Washington, according to White House officials and lobbying experts.

According to the most recent estimates from the General Services Administration, 52 government agencies use 915 advisory committees organized under the law, with a total membership of more than 60,000. Other estimates put the figure at about 1,000 panels. Federal officials say they do not know how many panel members are lobbyists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602362_pf.html

Thanks for the good laugh. I liked this one too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/telnaes/telnaes11132009.html

Probably because water is flown in from North (or South?) Carolina.

Hygiene is a major issue in the reuse of mattresses as intended. It’s generally prohibited. There’s no guarantee, btw, that the vendor who collects used mattress sets will not landfill them.

An alternative is to break them down into components, scrap metal, wood, and so on.