by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Do people really have to be told that they can reuse a biscuit tin and how? It would appear so.
In the photo below you will see that this definitely has to be thus nowadays and the makers now add the information to the container.
This one is not a tin tin in that it is not made of metal but of plastic but the rule applies in the same way. Help!
Where have all those people been? Our parents and grandparents made great use of such containers already decades and more ago. Now, it would appear, people have to relearn how to do things like that. What ever happened to “common sense?”
When I was a kid everyone's grandfather reused glass jars and all manner of tins to keep this and that in them, while the grandmothers too reused glass jars and other containers for sewing bits and pieces.
Today, it would appear, people have no idea whatsoever that this can be done and is the first recycling step before consigning the jar, the tin, or what-have-you, to the recycling bin.
So now, in order for people to understand this, manufacturers seem to think is necessary to print on confectionery tins, whether plastic or tin, that the container can be reused and even how.
Am I mad or is it the rest of the world?
Quality Street tins now have, printed on the bottom of the tins, instructions of how to recycle the tin, including reuse as a storage container.
How far away from common sense have we actually come? Somewhere along the way the world really seems to have lost the plot and all that goes with it.
In years gone by it was common for anything like this to be reused, including ordinary tin cans, for a legion of things. No one in their right mind would have thought of disposing of a biscuit tin or such like in the same way as no one would have thought – bar the real rich – of going to buy a pencil bin when a tin can will do the same job for nothing.
The consumer society, however, seems to have “educated” this out of the great majority of people today and it is very sad to see that they have to have basic instructions nowadays of how to reuse something.
We must really have taken a wrong turning somewhere along the road and I guess it is the Sat Nav's fault.
I personally find it incomprehensible that the world has gone into such a strange direction that all we can think of is to go and spend money and that even the governments keep telling us that, in order to keep the economy healthy, we have to go and spend some more.
Thrift was once upon a time common and, rather than frowned upon, something that was being encouraged by everyone, including the governments but now the thrifty person is labeled in the same category as terrorist as they do not “support” the economy.
In the other hand we now have instructions as to and of how to reuse confectionery tins and such like, given by the manufacturers even.
While it is a good thing for people to be encouraged to reuse in this way it is just so sad that people have to be told rather than have the sense to know as to what to do with something like that.
© 2010
