The recent announcement that our local glass recycling is instead going to a landfill (Leader 10/30) reminds us that America once lived lighter on the land than we do now.

I was born in 1950. One of my young jobs was to put the empty milk bottles out where the milkman would exchange them for full ones. When milk companies went to disposable containers, we were told that the milk company didn’t like how scratched the empties got and only reused them a couple times, but still the company had the “supply chain” worked out where clear glass was melted down with clear, and new bottles were made.

When I became aware of beer, there was a deposit on the 24-bottle case, and the returned brown glass was either reused or melted down with pre-sorted brown glass. This wasn’t noble, or “liberal,” it was basically smart and less wasteful, and everyone went with it.

A recent trip to the Jefferson recycling showed that most of the glass in the bin was from wine bottles. My father grew up in Chicago, where every Italian neighborhood had a liquor store with wine in wooden kegs.

A family kid was handed a gallon jug in the afternoon and sent off to get wine. The family had an account at the store, the kid would bring wine home for dinner. No wasted glass, bottle deposit, or recycling.

As I mentioned, I was born in 1950. I recently researched, and today the world population is three-times what it was on the day I was born. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that America can’t continue on our current trajectory.

We need the good, logical, frugal ideas from yesterday, and the very best and leanest ideas for any child’s tomorrow.

Kenneth Bowen

Port Townsend