Before plastic.

I used to work as a Saturday girl in a shop and can remember sell by dates coming in around 1971 But we also had a corner shop that used to sell flour, sugar rice etc by weight into a paper bag but most of all I remember the big tins of biscuits one big tin for each kind and you could pick what you want and get it weighed my favourite was a lemon puff

It seems quite possible to return to a largely similar system now. It's something we should do.

I'm always trying to avoid plastic film packaging, when I can, but it's so difficult, with everything delivered.

The milkman leaves groceries in brown paper sacks, eggs in board boxes - but a lot of things are pre-wrapped in plastic anyway.

The vegetable box is packaging free, though, apart from the spinach.

During the war we lived with my grandparents in a large terraced house in Kensington. Coal was delivered with a horse and cart, and the sacks were tipped into round coal holes, with iron covers, in the pavement. The coal went straight into a large cupboard inside the basement, which we used as a shelter during air raids.

I was born in '44 and this thread is bringing back SO many memories and also a song that's going to be today's ear worm "brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favourite things", anyone?
The mention of a potato bag, that one specially kept for the tats and accompanying soil, was, in our house, a half-moon bag. I'd forgotten about it until a boyfriend many years later gave me a Gucci bag.It was mid-brown leather in a half moon shape.... I've still got it and still refer to it as "my potato bag"

I remember as a child the anticipation and excitement during Christmas week waiting for a special delivery from my maternal grandparents in rural Ireland. They would kill one of their turkeys, wrap it up in brown paper, tie it up with string and post it to us!

Miraculously it never arrived “off” We didn’t have a fridge and my Mum used to take it to the local butcher and he would store it for a few days in his fridge till Christmas Eve.

craftyone we were the same. Some posh people on here, with their home deliveries ?

we didn`t get any deliveries, except milk and coal. We had no garden, no larder, a tiny yard and an outside toilet. Poor then really was poor

Less waste when vegetables and fruit were delivered to shops too. Fruit in wooden Bushel boxes (56 pounds in a Bushel I think) all returnable. Bananas in huge coffin shaped wooden boxes. Vegetables in paper sacks. No plastic in sight.

Late forties, when I was about 8, I was sent to get groceries from the coop, because I could go for half fare on the bus. There was no choosing needed...just collecting the rations. The worst part was having to take any bad eggs back, in a jamjar, to be replaced.

I quite agree with your mother 're self service tills!

My parents had a small poultry farm. Mum sold surplus eggs which hadn’t gone to the local Egg Packing Station at the door.They were put into the blue paper bags that sugar had been in because they were good and strong.

Expect the customers found their eggs had a few grains of sugar round them.

My father was a greengrocer and I had to help in the shop after school. Everything was weighed and then tipped in the customers bag. The heavy things went in first and we had to add up in our heads as we went along.
One customer used to have several sacks of potatoes delivered at once and they were tipped in the bath. When the large family ran out of potatoes they could all have a bath.

Nearly everything was delivered. The grocer's van came round every week, as did the baker and the butcher. We had a little metal basket for the milk bottles, with a dial to show how many pints we wanted that morning. We had a huge garden so most veg were homegrown. A string bag was used for fruit and anything else we bought. Butter came in paper which was carefully saved to grease baking tins.

Even in the 60s it was brown paper or newspaper.cheese was in greaseproof..or a good canvas bag for the veg

When I was little my jobs were to collect the eggs and wrap eac one individually for anyone coming to buy them.We had no dustbin collections or water closet toilet.The toilet was a wooden seat over a hole which my grandad had to empty every couple of months.Another of my jobs was to cut up the Daily Sketch into squares and thread them on string to hang behind the toilet door.The bread man came twice a week and the bread was wrapped in tissue paper.The butcher came on Friday evening with a big box full of different meats.A large piece of brisket on the bone for Sunday,a heart or breast of lamb for Saturday,sausages,black pudding savoury ducks and brawn,all of these went into the meat safe in the milk house,where we made our own butter and cheese.Vegetables came straight out of the garden,milk straight from the cow.I was allowed a tube of Polos when the grocers van came round.He also carried paraffin and other smelly items.How different everything is now,but I'm sure we could go back to paper bags and white or brown paper for wrapping larger things

I seem to remember washing up bowls made of papier-mâché- have I imagined it? As well as the good old enamel ones.

I’m just old enough to remember sugar coming in blue bags from the old-fashioned grocer’s (at least it’s still paper) where your bacon was sliced to order, and the milkman coming with a horse. I still have milk delivered in glass though.

I have a bit of a Thing about plastic now - dh was grumbled at when he bought mayonnaise in a plastic squirty bottle, rather than the glass jar we’d always had before.

I seem to remember my mum keeping large jam jars and puting things in those then putting the lids back before putting in the fridge. She also had a 'potato' bag made out of some sort of waxed material and she used that for 'dirty' veg. The bag the bread came in was also saved for sandwiches and the wrapper from the butter was folded put in the fridge and then used in the bottom of a cake tin when baking. Biscuit tins were also saved for lots of different things. Plus she would keep onions in a old pair of stockings and they were hung in the 'outhouse' so they kept for longer.

I remember going out to the mobile baker . He used to lick his fingers to open the paper bag, then blow into it , then push his hand inside it all around to fully expand it . I was always fascinated by this - it meant we were getting cakes !
Nowadays I would be horrified ( still like cakes though ! )

Not only wrappings. Remember we had dish cloths, floor mops, window cloth (when we weren’t using newspaper), dusters etc. all of which were washable and reusable.

I remember my mum saving the grease proof paper that loaves were wrapped in to wrap my dads sandwiches for work and we had a woven bag which we took to the fruit and veg shop for the veg man to fill with unwrapped fruit and veg - things like cherries were put in a paper bag . We bought fish and seafood wrapped in white paper and newspaper and the bleach man would deliver , bleach , washing up liquid and general cleaner once a fortnight and take away the empties.

Bijou, I boil the giblets for the cats if I get a farm chicken which contains them and the juice goes in the gravy.

1950s childhood was a trip to the Co-op for groceries with sugar in thick blue paper bags that we opened to its fullest extent and shook so that we didn’t lose a grain!

Also 5lb (?) tin boxes of Peek Freanes (sp?) broken biscuits sold cheaply.

1960s meant browsing in Woolworths and buying a slab of their iced fruit cake, queuing at Sainsbury’s for freshly sliced bacon and a patty of butter. Not to mention their excellent sausages!

No horrible plastic, just greaseproof paper, sheets of white paper, newspaper and brown paper bags. Where did we go so wrong in damaging our environment?

I remember carrier bags were made of brown paper with string for handles. Really cut into your hands when they were heavy!

I remember cheese, bacon, ham. butter, biscuits, tea and sugar, being weighed in the shop and wrapped in grease proof paper. My aim in life was to cut the butter and cheese with the wire they used, however I never rose to those dizzy heights as I went to work in an office. Horse and cart, for milk delivery, rag and bone man with his horse and cart collected old clothes and a goldfish was given back that died the next day. Paper bags were common place.

In the early 1930s, veg and fruit in brown paper bags in brown carrier bag with string handles and greangrocers name on it. Bread from the independent backer in tissue paper. Eggs in a brown paper bag or your own basin. Before bottles milk man would come round with a churn and you would take out a jug to be filled. Bacon was sliced to your order and wrapped in grease proof. Biscuits were all sold loose from big tins and put in bag.
My husband was apprenticed to a grocer when he was 14. (1934) Tea came in a wooden chest and were weighed out to order in paper. Sugar was weighed and put into blue bags. He had to bone out a side of bacon and to draw out chickens and turkeys. What happens to the giblets now?