Well, growing up I remember my grandparents describing how they used to get milk, soda, beer and household chemicals in glass containers instead of plastic. I g

Well, growing up I remember my grandparents describing how they used to get milk, soda, beer and household chemicals in glass containers instead of plastic. I grew up long after that was common, but as a kid it was still profitable to collect the glass soda bottles I found and return them for the meager deposit fees to buy stuff. Now everything is in single use disposable plastic containers and there are microplastics in everything. It was more common to repair rather than replace things like vacuum cleaners, TVs and small appliances in my youth, now everything is disposable and tossed in the landfill as soon as it breaks. I remember reusing paper sacks when we went to the grocery store instead of single-use plastic bags, and even if they weren't reused they could be used to collect compostable waste in the house and just tossed in the compost pile for the garden to break down with all the other organics if they weren't used in some other way - but even just tossing them away was arguably more sustainable than the plastic bags we used today. Professionally, I've worked on efforts to automate warehouse work and the business continuity strategy is always "they can use the manual process from before" except that within a less than a year many don't remember the manual process, no new staff was trained on the manual process and even if someone was still on staff that knew the manual process chances are it's no longer even possible due to other system changes. Then something happens that takes out the automation for a day or two. You even see echos of that in the current Just in Time supply chain issues many companies are experiencing. The automation is good because it enables improved pick rates but the skills to work without the automation are lost quickly, my point to the business has always been you need to practice without the automation though unless you want to accept shutting down all warehouse activity when systems go down.