Retail minus packaging

Packaging, packaging , packaging = garbage, resources, transportation costs

If packaging products individually was less prevalent, would the way we acquire products be different?

Security for items would be different because they could

• get damaged or soiled by browsing customers
• disappear / be stolen
• be unsafe to customers
• lose their small parts

Maybe shopping would look more like the "ye olde general store"

with the products behind counters accessible only by employees
and you had to ask to see something.

That would mean different jobs - not running packaging machines
but actually interacting with customers.

Or maybe we could stop expecting everything we think we need to be sitting there
in a store
waiting just for us to come by and buy it.

We could order it / put it on lay-away over the internet, maybe?

Then it would be shipped in a bulk shipment
to the store (not couriering individual items to our door - that takes too much fuel) and

we could go pick it up as we run several errands at once or at lunch time.

How did the transition from bulk general store to supermaket come about, anyway.

#whatif the air was so toxic ...

Disclaimer for all non-INTJ's: don't be alarmed. This is just a 'thought exercise'. Don't panic.

What if all the air on earth was toxic to the point you had to have a canister of clean air and breath it through a mask all the time. (You'd be just like a smoker, or someone with emphysema that totes around that canister all the time).

Hmmmm. Yes, everyone would have to have a clean air canister (CAC) all the time, from the moment they were born; yes, even babies, till the end - whatever that means.

You'd have to keep a supply of CAC's but, if you ran out, say at 1:00 am because you forgot to stop at the grocery / air store on your way home from work, you'd have to drive down to your local corner store. Maybe there would even be street-sellers.

You could still breath the air but it would be just toxic enough it would make you cough, and feel ill for a while, and take a day off your life span (on average) for every minute you breathed it.

Really rich people would have their whole houses sealed and a central clean air system. And the choice jobs would be at whole buildings with central clean air systems.

All the fruits and vegetables tasted weird, too; especially wine and beer.