What's the difference?

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Herb Storage Jar_mine1-1Herb Storage Jar 

You see two glass jars in the two different pictures, both intended from home-grown herbs. Can you tell the difference?

Well, the difference is not in the looks, as you may have thought. Nay, it is in the price. The one on the left with the fancy writing costs £2.95 while that one on the right, with the Brother labeling machine label, costs nothing bar the label.

How come? Well the one with the yellow label is reused, being previously a mustard jar, while the other one is on sale at some “green” outlet, the name of which shall not be mentioned here.

Paying £2.95 (that is the best part of US$5) for a glass jar to put your home-grown and dried herbs in when all you have to do is to reuse a jar that you get anyway with this or that product you get from the stores does not make sense. To me at least it doesn't.

The one for sale does not even, as is so often though the case, make the claim of being made from recycled glass, and even if it were it still would be silly to buy one when one can get one free the other way.

Our parents and grandparents, and it must be noted that was before green came into fashion, would never have thought in a million years about going out to buy something like that when they were keeping jars back for such purposes anyway.

I am not sure where we have gone wrong and where we have taken the wrong turning but I think it would be a good idea if we retraced our steps and got back onto the good road.

© 2011