Plastic and the planet
GUEST COLUMN, Greg Doering, Kansas Farm Bureau
I couldn’t help but think of the Folger’s coffee cans around my grandparent’s house when I saw “Planet vs. Plastics,” the slogan for Earth Day this year. There was always a can in the kitchen near the percolator ready to brew a fresh pot. Once emptied, the cans were repurposed in the basement, garage and barn for a whole host of other purposes, ranging from simple storage to cleaning paint brushes. On the Fourth of July, my cousins and I would scrounge up a can that hadn’t found a use yet and proceed to use firecrackers to launch it like a missile.
Most of those cans still serve a purpose, holding an assortment of washers in the garage or fence clips in the barn, but long ago Folger’s ditched the cans for plastic containers. The stated goal at the time was to provide fresher ground coffee, but I also imagine there was some cost savings as well. Either way, the utility of an empty container didn’t change much. But I doubt we’d have much success using fireworks with the modern version.
