Ever come across a bottle of out-of-date sleep medication or pain killer in your medicine chest? I bet you have. Out-of-date meds and even out-of-date over the counter stuff seem to proliferate like mushrooms in the dark every couple of years when we’re not looking. I’m convinced they come from “The Land of Disappeared Socks”. I swear the socks go in and the out-of-date expectorant comes out (bringing with it the occasional box of rice and mealey bugs designed to screw up the menu of your next romantic dinner.) When I discover these bottles or boxes, at first I feel silly for spending money on something I couldn’t use or didn’t need. Then I feel guilty. Funny, as a child, I somehow I never thought about the starving kids in Africa when I didn’t clean my plate, but as an adult I feel guilty for wasting perfectly good medicine when little “Kunta-Kinte” could’ve used it. Before you know it, I’m mad at the unfairness of it all and then I look around me at all the brightly colored pills and powders n’ things and for one second think, “This would make a FUN collage!”

Seriously. Ever ask the question, “What should be done with outdated meds?”
Well, because I think a lot, I did. Called a couple of pharmacies, did some searching on the net and guess what? Many still advise and practice the flushem’ routein even tho’ we discovered antibiotics, hormones, antidepressants, blood pressure meds etc. in our drinking water. One pharmacist I spoke to told me to crush the meds up with coffee grounds or kitty litter (so they are unuseable), put them back in the bottle and throw them out. I think I heard somewhere they are trying develop a program which would allow people to dispose of old meds at the same time they get rid of their other hazardous waste. I haven’t yet called to find out if my local hazardous waste department does this but I will. The WikiHow website says you can take expired meds to your local pharmacy or hospital where they will be properly disposed. However, not all hospitals and pharmacies have these facilities or public programs, mine don’t. I read that some hospitals and nursing homes just incinerate their old meds. Does this mean I can just chuck mine into the woodstove or the chiminea in the back yard? Hmmm.

And what of the fate of those perfectly good antibiotics in your bedside table? Chances are the reason they are there is because you decided to be a “Smart Alec” and not finish your course of medicine. “Well, I didn’t feel sick anymore and I hate taking pills!”, you told yourself. What about the time your pet potbelly pig died and your shrink gave you a scrip’ for an antidepressant that made you gain weight so you stopped using it and went on to something else? There are a lot of people out there who’d probably purchase the left overs to pop into their bosses morning libation just to see if they put away their fangs and become human again.
BUT SERIOUSLY, I don’t advocate anyone becoming a drug dealer or trying nepharious experiments on a boss no matter how psycho the boss. But isn’t it a shame we can’t do something with all those perfectly good meds? Why couldn’t we donate them to the local (local only) AMERICARES clinics. See, if people were only allowed to donate to their local AMERICARES clinic they’d have a way of tracking the meds. And patients could sign a waiver saying they know the meds were donated, absolving AMERICARES for anything. It’s simplistic and probably fraught with pitfalls and problems. And as usual insurance companies would step in (step on) this idea, as would the big, bad pharmaceaticals. I just wish something could be done that was maybe grass roots (shhh, don’t tell the drug companies!). It would be so nice to help people in my own back yard and maybe I could get rid of all those “Gawd Awful collages” I’ve made. >kidding<

Just a thought I caught flying by, what do you think?

WHAT is up with the world of packaging? Don’t they listen to the news, read books? These days all we talk about is conservation, The Green Movement and any effort we might put in.

“Did you know that shutting off the water while brushing teeth saves X gallons of water and can save the lives of Y herds of gigunda elephants?”

“No! but just last week I saved some dolphins by only filling up my bathtub half way!”

I know I’m poking fun, but we have all gotten so terribly earnest and serious about “Greening” and, eh, if we go a bit overboard, it may not be such a bad thing because something needs to be done.

What I’d like to know is why hasn’t the word gotten out to package designers? Ever notice when you by a bottle of aspirin it will say 60 tablets but the bottle could probably hold 1oo and they stuff it with lots of cotton to boot. Now tell the truth, how many times have you thrown away that cotton? What a waste.

What about that bag of evilly delicious crunchy snack treats? The bag says X number of ounces, okay? but when you open it, and stick your paw in…all ready for that first crunch, it takes you about half a mile to reach the bottom of the bag where the evilly delicious is located. Most of the package is taken up by so much empty space filled with air. What a waste.

Not too long ago I went to the movies, where, even at a matinee, it cost me 10 bucks. But I digress and that’s another topic. My issue is with the movie candy packagers. I bought a huge box of Raisinettes and do you know that when I opened it up, inside was a plastic bag of candy that was only half the size of the huge box! Interestingly enough, a similar box of candy at the supermarket doesn’t have the plastic bag inside, just the candy, and it seems to me, to be more full. Try it out.

And y’know? I love eating popcorn at the movies…but, like, excuse me? Why did they ever do away with the popcorn buckets? I bet the buckets were too expensive a package. Those silly bags are fercockta and just plain messy. Plus you can never get the butter evenly spread, even if the popcorn person is kind enough to fill it half way and let you add butter before filling it the rest of the way. I have actually resorted to taking one of those black plastic doggy bag containers most restaurants seem to favor these days, pouring my bag of popcorn into it, then adding the butter. Close the lid and shake! All that buttery goodness gets evenly spread and doesn’t end up on my pants because it leaked through the fercockta bag. I ask you, why don’t they have plastic popcorn buckets that can be washed or recycled?

And people are not the only ones getting gypped, rooked and bamboozeled. Our poor furry friends are just as afflicted by the bad packaging people. A curious thing happened to the furry friends food biz awhile back. They started making “shredded”, “sliced” and “prime cuts in gravy” dinners [translation: anything labeled shredded, sliced or prime cuts = less meat, more gravy]. When savvy consumers started to catch on and bought the the more typical style dinner, the one without gravy, they started shrinking the amount of food in the can and filling in the space with, you guessed it, gravy. I know this issue has more to do with cheating food manufacturers than cheating package designers. But it still is a misleading package and it still gets my goat. Besides a cat cannot live by gravy alone (and neither can a dog!) and we need to say something before all that’s left in the can is gravy!

There are some products like Tic-Tacs that have no choice. It would look bad if they tried to use the old “some settling may have occurred” line. Hey, I wonder how come pasta makers are so honest. As far as I know, I have yet to open a box of pasta and find it has “settled during shipping” to the point that it’s only half full. Toothpaste is the same way…no half full tubes here. Hmmm.

On the bright side, there are some companies that are very good about packaging and even quite innovative. In an upcoming blog I will be listing some of them. (See page called Packaging Industry: Good vs Evil). You are welcome to add yours to my list of bad guys and good guys…maybe we can make a small dent in the waste or perhaps keep em’ a little more honest. Big business is betting “John Q” doesn’t see these things or if he does, doesn’t care about them, but I bet he does care and so do I.

Just a thought I caught flying by, what do you think?