Before plastic?

[Chocolala]

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the environment and throwaway society, and this has led me to wonder what we did about various products before we had plastic. I assume we must have had alternatives, but what were they?

How were teeth brushed/cleaned? Did we eat yoghurt and if yes, how did we contain it? How did we get meat home from the shop/farm/wherever? What about strawberries?

Those are the ones that spring to mind, though there will be more. Anyone know the answers?

I remember Liquid Gumption! My mum had it back in the 70s. It was a bit like Jif/Cif I think.

Born in the 60's. I remember the time before lots of plastic.

Glass baby bottle (and dinky)
Rubber pants (so I was told)
DM used a string bag for shopping
Vegetables were wrapped in news paper at green grocer
Meat was brown paper, bread was white paper bags
Bread came in waxed paper wrapping (some still does)
Lemonade and milk delivered in glass bottles.
Lunch was taken to school in tuperware boxes and tumbler of orange squash (how many times that lid came off in my school bag). Household cleaner was flash in card box or vim in card tub with metal bottom and lid.
Paper straws
Chocolate was wrapped in foil with paper sleeves.

Everything was reused, the waxed bread paper was folded flat for sandwiches on picnics, tinfoil was strong and reused, glass bottles were returnable.

I’ve been making my own yoghurt, in glass jars to cut down on plastic. It’s quite easy, so it turns out.

I remember strawberries being in a cardboard punnet. Potatoes in paper sacks. We ate A LOT of potatoes. Fruit wrapped in tissue paper sometimes. Bread was in a waxed paper package (this is the 1980’s). In Scotland you could still get Irn Bru and other drinks in glass bottles with a deposit in the late 90’s early ‘00’s.

DM had one of these for going to the local shops. Quite chic in the 60s, I think.
I remember getting biscuits by the scoop. Sports biscuits were the cheapest, with stick figures doing different games. Or broken biscuits at half price.
And the HUGE (to me, anyway) hand-cranked bacon slicer with a red cast iron base.
The sweets were all served from glass jars into paper bags well into the 70s. Our corner shop man was like Ronnie Barker in his brown jacket. Straight from handling newspapers to delving into sweet jars. Yuk.

Sorry, here’s the basket!

I am in Croatia atm. Outside the supermarket there is a machine for giving a deposit back on plastic bottles. I noticed a young lad collecting them out of bins the other night to earn a bit of money. There is NO litter here.

I am in my 30's btu always remember the only cleaning stuff my granny used was stardrops in a glass bottle. Seemed to last forever too.

Paper. Glass. Paper and glass.
Fabric shopping bags.

Strawberries came in punnets made from woven or pressed wood shavings. Yoghurt wasn't widely available until the 60s. Blocks of ice cream came packed in waxed cardboard boxes.
Cellophane was widely used were now plastic is used.
Cakes were packed in paper bags or cardboard boxes.
Sweets were sold lose, packed in paper bags or screws.
Sugar was packed in thick "sugar" paper!
Butter wrapped in grease proof paper, (if you were lucky it would be stamped with the shop's name!)
Cream came in glass jars.
Cheese wrapped in grease proof paper.

Packed lunch (snap) often went into an old biscuit or oxo tin.

Cardboard, paper and glass packaging.
Food bought fresh, locally, daily. Food was ingredients rather than ready made.
Far less mass production, much shorter shelf lives.
I grew up in the 1970s/80s. Cleaning products were largely Ajax scouring powder in a cardboard tube with a metal shaker lid; washing up liquid and bleach in plastic bottles; laundry and dishwasher (we were posh!) detergents in cardboard tubs/boxes; wire wool or soap impregnated wire scourers (cardboard box); soda crystals (cardboard box). I don’t seem to remember Super Magic Flowery Smell Every Surface Cleaner type products in trigger sprays until the late 80s/90s.

DM made yogurt in a thermos, but we got Ski hazelnut yoghurts in plastic pots as a treat.

Ice cream mostly came in card, but when you got it in a box you reused that box until it fell apart, toys and packed lunches!

Tooth powder in tins!

Glass pop bottles had a deposit scheme. It was very exciting going down the road to get the 3p!

Fruit and veg bought loose by weight in paper bags from greengrocer; later in thin plastic bags from Sainsbury’s, but not prepackaged.

I grew up in central London. We had doorstep milk, and orange juice in glass bottles. I know live in Yorkshire, where we have doorstep milk from a farm lesss than 3 miles away. It’s usually on the doorstep by 11pm - the cows are milked between 4-7pm. Doorstep eggs too, in cardboard. Paper bag greengrocer put up a good fight when Tesco local opened, but closed s few years ago. Lots of farm shops though.

I rememeber the gondola basket! It held loads. This was in the Sixties. You would carry your spuds in them and spend ages getting the bits of dried mud from between the canes. Deposits on pop bottles - we used to scour the streets for them and return them to shops for 3d. Meat was brought home wrapped in paper and kept in the meatsafe ( no fridge). Everything was wrapped in paper or greaseproof which was smoothed out and kept in the kitchen drawer for re-use as sandwich wrappers.Very little was wasted back then.

Not plastic as such but my grandmother would ask the green grocer for the purple tissue paper oranges came individually wrapped in to use in the outside privy.

I am old enough to remember the corner store with big hessian sacks of flour and rice in the doorway which was scooped into paper bags. Usually topped by a sleeping shop's cat.

Oh just remembered. My grandmother used to clean for an old man in our town. He saved his copper coins in used sugar bags, a separate one for each denomination.

I thought Ski yogurts came in waxed cardboard pots, like most desserts did. The Ski yogurt pots were that exciting, almost conical shape! Oh, we made our own fun in them days.

So how did people wash dishes? What form of soap did they use?

Im guessing shampoo came in glass bottles.
Loo roll was wrapped in paper.

I agree that if the major supermarkets put their collective might behind it all of these things could come back.
It sickens me that they still have polythene plastic bags to wrap fruit and veg in. They could so easily get paper ones.

Enamel washing up bowl, block of Sunlight soap.

In the sixties it was definitely fairy liquid in a plastic bottle & shampoo in a plastic bottle but I don't know what happened before that - people probably just used block soap. My grandmother used to scrub my father's face with vim to try & get rid of his blackheads (poor man just had large pores), but I don't imagine that was common practice. I remember liquid gumption too - very much a forerunner of Jif/Cif. And I'd forgotten about flash in a cardboard box.

I'm only in my 40's and I remember, the milk man delivering milk and orange juice and fizzy pop in glass bottles. We'd return them for money off the next bottle.

Yes sweets in paper bags from the pick and mix and we didn't get a big supermarket in our town till I was a bit older. So fresh stuff still camp from the butchers and green groashers, with a monthly shop to a big supermarket a distance away. It was a family trip out.

Oh and for anyone interested your fish and chips still comes in newspaper, it's just the paper before it's been printed on now.

We have a milkman delivering milk in glass bottles. It's awesome.

How was frozen food like peas sold or was there not frozen food?

Anyone remeber cutting out the little green baby pic from the side of Fairy washing up liquid bottles? They were 'worth' 1farthing (yes really!)
each. Collect 4 and you had a whole old penny to spend in the shop where you bought the Fairy liquid from. One very enterprising shopkeeper!
Carbolic soap anyone? We smelled lovely!