[Albion Wilde]

Instead of plastic:
- Glass jars of many sizes
- Wax paper
- other stuff

Cloth sacks, cardboard boxes with string and handles, glass bowls with lids.

Kids today think they invented "sustainable" and "organic", but most of the food we ate was organic in the 50s, because it came from local farms to the grocers. There were some chain groceries, but very little frozen food. Women shopped often, sometimes every day, so your food was fresh and not full of preservatives. Many homemakers also had string bags or individual shopping carts, and walked to the store or took a bus, because there was only one car and dad needed it for work. (I'm speaking for urban and suburban areas here. We grew up two miles from the city line of a large city.)

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Yes, it cracks me up that kids think they are living lightly on the earth when they throw away pounds of single-use plastic every day!

Before 1960, hardly any products came in plastic containers. As you say, cloth sacks, paper bags, waxed kraft paper wrap for meat and fish, metal toothpaste tubes (that stayed squished and didn’t spring back!), even glass jars for toiletries.

I’m watching the first seasons of “Death Valley Days” and look for how things were wrapped for customers in the general stores. Early kraft wrapping paper and twine in abundance. Of course, kraft paper required the Kraft process and paper mills and they were fairly new at the turn of the 20th Century. The kraft process was invented by Carl F. Dahl in 1879 in Danzig, Prussia, Germany. U.S. patent 296,935 was issued in 1884, and a pulp mill using this technology began in Sweden in 1890.

I didn’t know that the kraft process was invented in Danzig. That happens to be where my Dad was born!

[linMcHlp]

Yep. Also, the milkman brought eggs, cheese, cream, milk.

[ridesthemiles]

Chicken feed came in patterned cotton & was used for dish towels. I STILL HAVE A COUPLE-—FROM THE 50’s.