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?

Ice cream as previous poster has said came in a block wrapped in waxed cardboard.
I well remember raspberry ripple and neopolitan blocks.

I think we ate much more tinned food then (60s and 70s) too.
Tinned sweetcorn, peas and sometimes carrots.
Tinned fruit with evaporated milk.

I remember tinned rather than frozen peas.

Chocolala

We used SR toothpowder in a metal tin. Wet brush and dip then scrub. Worked fine even though you ended up with a fine dusting of tooth powder if you were not careful.

There was still a shop where you could buy dried foods by the scoop in the backwards town where my mother lives until about 7 years ago. Everything from flour, rice & sugar to pick n mix, breakfast cereals and spices.

Bakelite was a forerunner of plastic.
Toothbrushes had wooden handles.
Food was wrapped in newspaper.
Ivory was used for things like cutlery handles.

The pop man / the Corona man !

YY, toothbrushes were wooden handles and natural bristles.

I'm loving this thread, very nostalgic.

In Canada all our plastic and glass bottle have a deposit and we collect them and take them to the depot for a refund/ put them in a specific bin for the City to collect.

The homeless litter pick bottles in the street for the $. Win/win.

Leather satchels for school, rubber wellies, canvas trainers (called sand shoes), ivory hairbrushes with bristles, silver trays, wooden toys, enamel buckets and bowls, metal dustbins and kettles, aluminium toothpaste tubes, glass jelly moulds, bone buttons, wooden pens with metal nibs, shellac records.
Saw all these in Heritage Centre recently.

In Canada all our plastic and glass bottle have a deposit and we collect them and take them to the depot for a refund/ put them in a specific bin for the City to collect.

The uk used to do this in the 60's, i wish they'd bring it back.

I'm 63 and don't remember frozen peas in anything other than plastic bags. Before that you had tinned or freeze-dried briefly.

Freezers weren't widespread until the 1970s, before that there would be just an ice box at the top of the fridge. We ate vegetables in season, so fresh peas, and then in the winter I guess it would be marrowfat peas, but we never had them as my mum hated them. In the winter we would have cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, tinned corn. Never broccoli as far as I remember!

Face palm

My parents didn't have a fridge until the late 60s, it had a tiny ice box, enough for a tray of ice cubes and on special occasions a block of ice cream. So we never had frozen food.

All our vegetables were seasonal, peas and spring greens, spinach young carrots, celery and green beans in the summer, then the winter vegetables leeks cauliflower parsnips carrots cabbage and turnips. Potatoes were seasonal too, no new potatoes in the depth of winter like nowadays!

I still tend to eat seasonally, and look forward to English asparagus in May, I'd never buy asparagus in December!

I’m fascinated by ‘tooth powder’z

Face palm
What does that mean?

Think ancient crafts. So, glass, earthenware, metal, paper.
Baskets for going to the grocers

I don't know why grapes are sold in plastic boxes now. The waste. In fact, I was in Sainsbury's fresh producd aisle today and thought, why all the plastic? Unnecessary!

Toothpaste as a kid was in some sort of metal tube. It was really hard to get the toothpaste out near the end.

@Furrycushion , yeah, I don't get that either.

I’m fascinated by ‘tooth powder’

It was a peppermint powder which came in a tin, you wet the toothbrush bristles then dipped it in the powder.

I once had a crush on Audrey Hepburn first heard it mentioned the film Charade, as a way of smuggling cocaine.
But I've seen it since, you can still buy it.

My Nan had a "smokers toothpowder" many years ago.

@CaptainKirkssparetupee - love that movie. That's what I'll watch this weekend!