Monday, February 22, 2016

plastic bottles


PLASTIC BOTTLES
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I think that plastic bottles and other items are, for almost all of us exempting perhaps a few Birkenstock wearing tree hugging female armpit hair braiding Californians, so common in our lives and so taken for granted that they are almost as water to fish.  I’m not bemoaning their presence, nor shall I jump upon a soapbox and screech at our imminent demise as a species from our pollution and point a shaking finger at a Pacific ocean layer of garbage-mostly plastic-the size of Texas or whatever.  I mean, Hello!, don’t bats and birds crap all over the floor of their house?  That fertilizer sure helped out our booming population for a hundred years prior to Kraut atmospheric nitrogen extraction.  Not all pollution is as beneficial, I’m only saying fouling ones nest isn’t just a human problem.  We’ve degrading our planet from Day One.  It isn’t just modern capitalists nor is plastic the first mass polluter.  We are pretty much pigs wallowing in our own filth.  I’m more of an optimist when it comes to plastics.  Sure, we are wasting an ungodly amount, and a lot is pure waste for a profit.  Getting a plastic toy which will break soon out of an insanely thick plastic shell which protects the item from sticky fingers, as well as from quality control tests, and provides on shelf advertising, is pretty much the poster boy of polluting wastefulness and greed run amok.  But plastic sheeting keeps me dry underground and plastic keeps our food sanitary and prolongs its life.  Plastic isn’t all bad, but mostly good even if a lot of the products should be labeled Earth Raper. 

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I’m also a big fan of plastic bottles.  I trash picked from works garbage all the Minute Maid brand one gallon juice bottles for my water hauling.  They were good for months and months of use, even with abrasion from the baskets on my bike they rode in.  They withstand freezing and thawing continuously as storage water out at my B-POD.  Rather than have one tank for water storage I like the dozens and dozens of half and full gallons.  My eggs aren’t all in one basket and they were free and they are portable.  Since I’ve been on my Water Therapy this last year ( a half once water per pound of body weight is recommended so I drink 100 ounces a day ), which I can’t recommend highly enough as it reduces the coffee I crave and  eliminates painful and frequent nighttime urination which can only be helping my middle age prostate,  I’ve been saving all the twenty ounce Gatorade bottles I get from work ( I use ten ounces of Gatorade a day to flavor a bottle of water I drink at work, the rest of my water is just water.  I tried very small amounts of diet drinks for flavoring more of my water but I quickly felt the adverse health effects of that ) both to use in my drinking water and keeping tract of how much I drink, but the surplus gets filled and stored.  It might not be much having an extra gallon stored once a month, but I save extremely thick plastic bottles and pay nothing for them.

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We all have to be careful to not store too much “junk”.  I could never get away with stocking my empty vitamin pill bottles, no matter how nice of a bottle they were.  I can get away with the water bottles as they are downstairs in the basement out of the way ( half the structure is sunk down to a concrete slab and the other half dirt floor crawl space.  I put the objectionable items like filled water bottles and buckets of rice in the crawlspace to keep the walk-in part nice and organized.  Guys, women want their home to be pretty.  Help them out to get some cooperation ).  I drink, maybe, a bottle of soda every three months.  When I quit smoking I could go through a 2-liter everyday, if not more.  Luckily I don’t like the crap much anymore.  More water jugs there, even if they do accumulate slowly.  Some of my junk bottles I have to hide.  I really got a lot of ribbing for my cleaning, de-labeling and saving a ketchup bottle.  Hey, the thing was really thick plastic.  Once we make our own bulk liquid soap that will be the perfect dish washing soap dispenser.  It disappeared behind the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink and so was acceptable for keeping.  Not all plastic is created equal.  Stock the best stuff and stock it deep.  Ceramic takes energy to fire.  Plastic is a much more efficient container, while they stay available.

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26 comments:

  1. Just discovered this guy the other day James and he's a hoot! Reminds me of a combination of Austen powers (The accent) and Andrew Dice Clay. Sadly, he speaks the bitter truth about what we here in the west have to look forward to in the very near future.

    THE WESTERN WORLD IS DOOMED - The End of Middle Class Life as we Know it.

    ARCHIELUXURY

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlsDNHlKmAI

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  2. In my neck of the woods, the Langer Juice plastic jugs are nice, thick plastic.

    I'm also a hoarder when it comes to gallon glass pickle jars and wool blankets -- you can never have enough.

    Idaho Homesteader

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    Replies
    1. Can't remember the last gallon size pickles I saw. Wally jars seem to have really shrunk down.

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    2. I still see gallon glass pickle jars at our local Ranch and Farm store in Sandpoint, Idaho.

      I've been collecting them for a long time -- luckily before they became too scarce.

      I have over 100 of them now. I use them for dry food storage like egg noodles, rice, chocolate chips, split peas, garden seeds, etc.

      Idaho Homesteader

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    3. IH how do you get rid of the pickle smell from the lid ? I have failed repeatedly .Doing BBQ I empty 1 to 2 a month.

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  3. Another very useful item James, are the 5 gallon collapsible water containers, but you usually have to buy those, and don't find them sitting around for free. The thick 1 or 2 gallon juice jugs are nice as well.

    Not plastic, but some of the juices come in the large glass jugs, and these will last forever unless you drop them. What's nice about these is that they can never leach compounds into the liquid, so they make an excellent container for purifying water (so long as it does not contain chemicals) via the SODIS method (Placed in the sunlight for a period, and disinfected through UV ) so it's a good idea to have at least a few of the glass jugs on hand.


    Not all plastic bottles are created equal James. The link below gives you an identifying number (usually at the bottom of the bottle within the little recycling triangle).

    http://www.we-impact.com/do-you-know-the-numbers-on-bottom-of-plastic-bottles-indicate/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aren't Mason jars a great alternate to juice jars, for the reason you state? Since we were just talking about canning.

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    2. “Aren't Mason jars a great alternate to juice jars, for the reason you state? Since we were just talking about canning.”

      I suppose James, but for purifying a large volume of water, the big glass jugs would be more convenient. They're easy to find because some of the juice companies are still using them.

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    3. You've got a point, it is just Mason jars are so easy/cheap/everywhere.

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  4. Agreed, plastics are lightweight, impact resistant, rust resistant, flexible, water and air tight, and very _very_ available right now. They do have a measurable lifespan however, UV light degrades it the most, but even just years of low or high temperature (or swings between them) can cause plastic to degrade as well. In my experience the more 'safe for human consumption' and thinner the plastic is the more likely you are to see the degradation.
    The breakdown of plastics can release cancer and other health condition causing chemicals - but as long as you are halfway careful the risk is probably minimal and likely outweighed by plastic containers advantages - what good is not getting cancer if you cut your hand open and die from the infection that causes with a fragile glass container that breaks?
    Another thing to keep in mind is the plastic is, believe it or not, chemically an ORGANIC molecule, this means pests can, and will - if they have sufficient motivation -, chew their way into plastic containers.
    Keeping these facts in mind when you utilize plastic containers can make all the difference in the world (I learned the hard way that keeping dry store bought beans in their plastic bag for years past the experation date made meant that I had to through out half the bad due to the degradation of the bag even though it was stored inside another storage container in very modest temperatures 40 to 65 F for all that time. The mag apparently just melted over time into the beans it was protecting, fortunately only 3 lbs worth, but still.)

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    Replies
    1. I've been just as guilty storing food in the grocery wrapper.

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  5. LMAO, thank you for the best description of California women!

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  6. One of the best plastic jugs on the market is cat litter containers. They are food grade 2 1/2 gallon with a large opening. You can even use plastic rap under the screw lid to make it air tight for storage.

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    Replies
    1. Have you calculated the cost of the jar, though? I remember that litter being a high premium over others. Of course, I only buy generic so my price point comparison might be off.

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    2. Where I shop its 4.69 in jug generic. It has the same volume as 3 to 3.5 bags at 99 cents so the premium is less than 1.50 ea. 2 of these will almost hold content of 5 gallon pail at a 1/3 the cost of a gama lid.

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    3. I must have been looking at a high dollar store, with no generic. Yours sounds quite reasonable and frugal.

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  7. It's nice to know I'm not the only one that has (to put it mildly) a lot of plastic bottles laying about. Hardly more then a few days goes by where a plastic bottle is not sitting upside down on top of the heat vent drying out.

    I have beans, rice, wheat, TVP and numerous other things stored in them. I have a label maker and I use it to mark what is in them, the date and any other info I think may be important.

    I also made up several give-away boxes with the above mentioned items and other supplies like a homemade Hobo Stove. I plan on using them to help family members that don't prep. No it's not a lot, but a month or so of food should help in most emergencies.


    Chuck Findlay.

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    Replies
    1. I should have enough metal coffee cans ( waiting to be emptied ) for years worth of hobo stoves.

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  8. I don't know if you check out Creek Stewart's blog (Fat Guys in the Woods), but he has a cool video on converting plastic bottles to cordage.

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    Replies
    1. Seems a little wasteful, but I guess you never know.

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  9. Chuck, giving a month or so food away, even to family that know where you live. Guarantee's that your life will end, before the month is over....

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    Replies
    1. It does just take one that doesn't like you. My sister disowned my dad over money and I've never had anything to do with her since. I can't say for certain I'd piss on her if she was on fire.

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    2. (Chuck, giving a month or so food away, even to family that know where you live. Guarantee's that your life will end, before the month is over....)

      I've already given that some thought, if it was real bad I would just move things to a new location and also myself in the motor home. I just put a hitch on it last Summer so I can haul an enclosed utility trailer that I just bought to store supplies. But bugging out is a last option.

      It's hard to think of family (My Son) not having food. He doesn't know that I have much food as it's stored out of site and off property. And he doesn't come around much, it's harder then heck to get him to come visit.

      But he knows I can build and fix anything and am resourceful to the extreme so SHTF I would expect him to be more in contact with me. But the problem is he would bring his wife, her sister, sisters husband and their alcoholic section-8 scumbag mother that I don't think has had a job that lasted more then a few months in 15-years.

      As far as this cabal of people moving in or stopping buy to get free food, NOT going to happen as I can't possibly feed that many people, don't want that many useless people (And they are truly useless as they don't know how to do anything and are very lazy.) And I don't have the room and know that beyond my son don't dare trust them. My son's allegiance is with his wife more then me as it should be, but I also think he would put all the rest above me surviving as he lives with all of them.

      Not an easy thing to think about or come up with a workable solution. Or at least I can't come up with one that allows contact with him and yet gives me security.

      I have tried to get my son to do some prepping and to buy a few extra food items every time they shop but it just doesn't take.


      I've been (and continue to) able to look like a person that only makes $15,000 or $20,000 a year and have limited ability to care for myself. And at the same time have been able to prep quite well and put up a lot of silver and cash. So hopefully I can continue to keep looking as poor as all heck and not someone that a person can come to to plunder supplies from.

      In today's USA we see people that live a simple pay-as-you-go no-debt life as not too successful. We have been geared to see success as unstoppable spending and consumerism debt-based living as the American dream. But in truth all this creates is a debt wage-slave.

      I think a serious collapse will require a rather hard ass mentality toward others that want from you and at the same time can't give anything in return. Other then youth I can't see much my son and his group can offer me.

      I never did understand Rawles vire of "Give till it hurts" that he puts forward in his books. As far as I can see if you give till it hurts it's probably going to run you out of supplies fast. As it's impossible to feed all the people you interact with. Helping others is great as long as you don't end up in the same boat, a sinking boat at that.

      Chuck Findlay

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    3. Rawles, and just about everyone else, can't truly understand logistics. Warehousing is NOT logistics. Material from their source, and its infrastructure, THAT is logistics. And gardening is NOT food source. So, introduce religious charity to that and there you go.

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    4. Tough predicament to be in Chuck. I've tried to apply some some logic to your situation, but I always come back to the same thing. You would either have to sever all ties with your son, or if you wish to do right by him, stockpile as much of the cheapest food that you can, which I would guess would have to be wheat? A hundred years ago this wouldn't be a topic for discussion, as most people would have been far more self reliant, and the section 8 welfare mom wouldn't have existed. But today it's the total opposite.


      “Rawles, and just about everyone else, can't truly understand logistics. Warehousing is NOT logistics. Material from their source, and its infrastructure, THAT is logistics. And gardening is NOT food source. So, introduce religious charity to that and there you go.”

      Yeah James, they must all sip from the same punchbowl, and purchase their rosy coloured glasses from the same place as Ty J. young of

      “We're Americans, and we're the greatest country on earth, and nothing bad can ever happen to us as a result” fame.

      These guys are looking at it as a short term disaster in which order will soon be restored. But after seeing the fiasco of Katrina and the following aftermath, I guess I don't have all that much faith myself in any of that happening, especially if it's a disaster of any magnitude beyond Katrina?

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    5. I look at Katrina like you would view the earthquake scale. 2 on the scale is ten times 1, not just double it. Katrina should have been a 1. Most everything else, above a localized national disaster, is at least a 5. If you can't fix 1...

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