Earth Day

I feel kind of like Andy Rooney with my curmudgeonly objections to so much packaging that comes with everything we buy. But here's a suggestion for everyone to try on Earth Day. I do it all the time. At the check out counter, remove unnecessary packaging and give it back to the clerk. You don't need those plastic hangers that come with cheap clothing we all wear. You don't need shoe boxes with the crumpled tissue paper and toe fillers. You don't need the boxes containing the toothpaste or the ibuprofen. Toiletries are the worst. You certainly don't need that dangerous clamshell rig on the batteries you buy. You don't need all that ingenious Chinese packing foam that comes when you buy a small lamp or electronics. Be real now, you'll never have to return it, and if you did you could never figure out how to get it back in the box (if you could find it).
Food items are harder. You don't want to go out of the store with breakfast cereal stuffed in your pockets or bald fried chicken in your purse, but you can eschew the plastic or paper bags for those nifty ones sold everywhere for under a dollar. Each one can contain what would be placed in FOUR plastic bags! So much easier.
I know you are thinking about the loss of jobs if we reduced packaging. There's no end to political correctness, is there? But even from a selfish view of closets, we know that less packaging means more room for what we already have. Not to mention the dreaded carbon footprint.
Today I went to a website www.catalogchoice.org , and canceled with ease all those catalogs that clog my mailbox. It's easy, it's free. You know you don't need that catalog about cattle insemination products, or the fifteenth one about 'window treatments', especially if you don't have any curtains and prefer it that way. Lighten the load to the recycling center (You DO recycle?)
And, last but not unimportant, try growing some of your own food. Fill containers with herbs and salad greens. For us tonight we have enough fresh broccoli, green beans and swiss chard to stagger sextillions of infidels, not to mention the guests.