While driving back home I thought about waste.
I don't believe I, my parents and their parents produced as much waste as people do these days.
Most of what we had, bought was meant to last a lifetime if not at least 5 or 10 lifetimes.
What was produced was quality and that's what people paid for. Plastic was rare if it came to items, clothes, shopping bags, shoes, medication, furniture and so on.
No plastic taps, buckets, bottles, tubs or bathtubs were sold. Doors were not made of plastic, nor were shelves or picture frames. Even dolls and other toys were not made of plastic, nor were purses.
I can imagine that anymore does not weigh so much and that may be easy when you buy milk or drag buckets of water around to do the laundry by hand, but the average person in the Western world has not been doing that for a long time. The washing machine, dishwasher and robot hoover take over our tasks and we go by car or bicycle to lift what we cannot carry.
When it comes to hygiene, we don't take it so seriously any more. The bed is not changed at least once a week, spiders are no longer hunted and spring cleaning is a thing of the past. Bicycles and cars are no longer washed or maintained once a week. Many a car owner drives around with a pile of rubbish
The real, clean housewife is rare and has no tips on how to keep the house clean with a maximum of three items. Nowadays, there is a (chemical) remedy in one or other spray bottle for every kind of dirt.
The manufacturers invent something for everything and even if it does not work, the consumer still buys it. Anyone who did not buy the latest thing did not belong and nothing has changed in this respect today.
Food was not wasted in the past and it was certainly not thrown away.
In my youth, there was no compost bin, no waste paper container or container for cans.
Jars were reused or had a deposit. Milk, buttermilk, yoghurt and custard came in glass bottles.
I now have glass bottles again. I bought 3 milk bottles and have them filled at the market. A bottle like that is easy to clean and a plastic one is not. Apart from the fact that plastic is not really healthy. It costs a lot to recycle plastic and not all types of plastic can be recycled. Also, not all plastic is suitable for storing food. Personally, I think that more plastic is thrown away than used. At the second-hand shops, I see mountains of plastic bins, cups, plates, coffee machines, thermos flasks, toys and so on. Used plastic quickly looks dirty and unattractive.
By the way, there is also beautiful tableware made of Plexiglas. My juice jug, for example, and the supermarket sells similar plastic bottles in which you can put freshly squeezed orange juice. Such a bottle is also reusable, doesn't break easily and it saves weight if weight is important
Personally, I liked my grandmother's stuff better than what's on sale nowadays.
I would love to have her washing tubs, buckets, lunch boxes, storage tins and, for example, her bicycle, or her old beds and mattresses filled with sea grass. Her kitchen worktop was made of granite or marble, not a plank of pressed wood with plastic foil on top.
The taps, the cutlery and the tools were all of a higher quality. Modern stainless steel the stainless steel of her generation is still in good condition. The thrift shops are full of it. All discarded items exchanged for plastic junk wrapped in yet more plastic. Stuff that sometimes ends up in the bin within a year.
See 
Prompt used: stainless steel
