> * Create a set of standardized, rugged, containers that seal around foods. We used to actually have this: it was wooden/plastic crates and boxes, pallets, bu

> * Create a set of standardized, rugged, containers that seal around foods. We used to actually have this: it was wooden/plastic crates and boxes, pallets, burlap bags, and glass milk/juice/beer bottles. We're moving backwards, and it's all due to economics. Reuse of those materials back then was motivated by the cost and difficulty of producing those containers. It simply was not economically feasible to produce a single-use crate or glass bottle--too expensive. Economics and the wonder-engine of capitalistic progress has now given us the ability to manufacture trillions of single-use containers for literally less than a penny a piece. It's just far cheaper and less of a headache to just produce, wrap, and then toss the waste. No one wants to deal with all the niggling details of carting bottles back and forth, washing, them, filling them. Just too much of a pain in the ass. So we get what we have now. Clean, no fuss, no mess. Just toss it. In many ways, our older economies--full of poor working saps who had to lug bottles back and forth--was far more sustainable than today's system. But today we're rich and lazy and awash in our own trash. Progress!