Before plastic.

The house we live in was built in 1933. The garden is absolutely full of broken glass, and a fair bit of china/pottery too, so I have come to the conclusion that things like that were were 'disposed of' by burying them in the garden!

Paper bags for small stuff.
String shopping bag for big stuff.
Milk, via the milkman, in bottles.
Eggs in cardboard boxes.
Fish and meat wrapped in paper/greaseproof.
Bread was naked.
Dustbins were metal, and as others have mentioned, very noisy.
Other unwanted household bits and bobs were collected by the rag-and-bone man, with his horse and cart.
Cheese in greaseproof paper.
Cream, yoghurt etc were in waxed paper cartons.
It was all so simple then...... ?

I remember taking the 'order book' to our local grocer/greengrocer who then sent a boy on a bike round with it later in the day. Sugar came in a blue paper bag. Bacon was in greaseproof paper.
Then Mum went in the next day to pay. Same with the butcher but we had to bring fish home from fishmonger. Everyone called mum by her married name too - never her Christian name although they had known her from a child too.

Bread was just loosely wrapped in a tissue type paper. Meat in a very thinly waxed paper then in a large sheet of white paper. Sugar was in a white paper bag. Firms such a lentils, dried peas in brown bags. Soap flakes (any one remember Lux) too.These bags seemed quite thick paper though. Fruit in a paper bag, eggs the same. Veg went straight an old leather or cloth shopping bag. Cam remember some folk having crocheted string bags to carry all the bags home in, useless if raining!

I remember sugar was always in strong blue paper , sometimes in cones , twirled into the appropriate size

Sugar is still sold in paper bags, except for icing sugar which is usually in a cardboard box.

I remember my mother having a ‘string’ bag and vegetables were put straight in without any wrapping. I do the same but I don’t have a string bag- I never use the bags provided by shops - such a waste, and as for putting bananas in bags - they come in their own bag!

Remember all of the above and also remember we turned to plastic because of the cutting down of too many trees. Now we're using so much more paper than we ever could have imagined back then. Let's see where this leads us.

The grocer had his eggs stacked in the cardboard trays you see now on market stalls.... he would put six eggs into a paper bag.... meat was wrapped ( if I remember correctly) in white wrapping paper ( lots of it) . Fish was wrapped the same way. Bread had a small slither of paper wrapped around it ( proper bread that is) just in case your hands were dirty....we were kids so they usually were. All veg was put loose into your mums string bag or paper carrier bag that youVe kept...usually til it fell to bits. If you didn’t have a bag the greengrocer was adept at making a sort of bowl/bag out of newspaper and your spuds and other veg would be piled in that. No waste those days and definitely no masses of plastic wrapping.

We had a lot of deliveries in those days. The bread man, the milk man, the veg man, the bleach man, the laundry man. Yes all men! The housewife didn't have to carry too much from the shops. Our butcher delivered too. It was a boy on a bike and meat was wrapped in thick brown paper.

In the 50s , the man from the Co-Op delivered weekly with his horse and cart. My mother dropped off her order for the next week when she paid the bill . She also bought fresh food at the local shops every day. Vegetables were put loose in a shopping bag kept for the purpose since things like potatoes came with soil attached ! My uncle was a butcher and he delivered the meat on a Saturday for Sunday’s roast . No fridge so it had to be kept cool somehow! Mothers didn’t work outside the home so fresh food was shopped for every day . The local bakery had a huge cutting machine . I was always fascinated watching our loaf being cut into thin or thick slices . Then wrapped in grease proof paper . Whole loaves were just handed over wrapped in white tissue paper . I used to be very keen to get hold of the greaseproof paper to use on the slide in the local park! There seemed to be very little packaging in the 50s but it was often reused . My mother peeled potatoes etc on newspaper and wrapped up the peelings in it and put that in the ash can. Cold ashes from the fire were often wrapped in newspaper to keep the ash can clean . Paper bags that sugar came in and other paper were burned on our coal fire in the sitting room. Sometimes to help the fire start . I suppose that generation were used to recycling ! There was very little waste . Possibly because the war years and before that the Depression were not really a distant memory . Being a child of the 50s, I still abhor waste !

Paper bags, carrier bags, string bags, cloth bags, greaseproof paper. That's all I remember. Cardboard box or an orange box (wooden ) ( re-usable ) for fruit and veg from the farm.
Brother pushed the wheelbarrow home along the narrow lane. We loved it. 6p each a week for that.
Bread left as it was in the porch, just scrape the dust from underneath it. Most food eaten was local until we grew our own veg.
A far healthier life and none of the illnesses we have now.

I don't remember anything plastic at all, the nearest being cellophane when that came around but that isn't made like plastic either or the same ingredients.

I remember vegetable peelings being mixed with small coal, which was kept separate, and put on a fire to damp it down and keep it in. My mother also put empty tin cans on the fire as when they glowed red they also threw out heat.

City dwellers had shopping delivered.

this made me laugh.

Fish and chips in newspaper.

Our bread was wrapped in tissue paper ( which my mother saved and used as toilet paper), Fruit and vegs went in brown paper bags. I remember brown paper carrier bags (which some times broke while carrying things home). Can't remember about other bits. But i can remember getting bargain apples in the market in a brown paper bag (mid 70s) I put them in the pushchair behind where my DD was sitting. I went to the ironmongers, went to find my purse to pay, stuck my hand behind where DD was sitting and found a lot of soggy apples each with a bite out of it! So much for my bargain!!

Same as maddyone Lots and lots of brown paper bags and greaseproof paper. In fact if the bags were clean then my mam used to keep them and reuse them. Pop and milk came in glass bottles. I can also remember hair shampoo being in a glass bottle.

Mamacaz. Your house may have been built on a tip. The common land opposite my house is full of bits of broken china and bottles. When finding old bottles became fashionable, some years ago, we were plagued by people digging holes, and leaving them. The Council put an extra layer of soil on, and banned digging.
The ‘night-soil men’ used to empty the communal lavatories, in Victorian times, which were often shared by numerous households. What an awful, and dangerous job, in those cholera days.
I was born in 1939, and remember going for ‘the rations’ with my mum, to the designated shop for groceries. The grocer used to deftly make a bag for sugar, etc, out of a sheet of paper. It fascinated me. Eggs, in a paper bag, were carefully placed on top of the other shopping. I don’t remember her struggling to carry her load on the mile walk home, so they must have been sparse.
Bread, fruit and veg came from the little shops near our home. They were just tipped into a bag or basket. Meat was also rationed, and in very small portions. Mum used to take a dish to put it in. We took a dish, or our own newspapers, to the fish and chip shop, which was a rare treat for us.
Milk was delivered to the doorstep, and the bottles were washed and returned
We didn’t have a garden, so food scraps were burned on the fire, though there was a ‘pig-bin in the road during the war, which stunk to high heaven in warm weather. I used to hate being told to put something in it!

Another thing, there was very little rubbish as it was burned on the coal fire. Peelings were kept for the pigs at the farm where we bought our veggies, orange peel was dried to light the fire with and blooded meat paper along with what the fish was wrapped in was burned so the bin didn't smell or attract flies.
Waste of any sort was minimal. Even ash from the fire was spread over the roses which included bone-meal from discarded meat.

Milk delivered (1940s) by horse( Dinah) and cart.( Even though in a large town it was from a local farm) Large ladles would be used to fill our jugs from their churns until I was seen as a small child to have tb glands from their unpasteurised milk.
My mother would go daily to the local grocers He had a small shop but rows of shelves stretching up to a high ceiling. Nevertheless, the grocer also had about 4 other assistants standing there . Mum would queue and chat until it was her turn and the order made,bacon sliced to her requirements etc 'I'm afraid the boy will be a bit late today so it won't be delivered for about another hour' The boy looked small and half the size of his very heavy bike and large front basket.
This was a daily ritual with deliveries being made from other shops in the square too.
The only exception was during the bilberry season. The boy would never get them to us quickly enough so I was sent to run to the shops with a wicker basket. The bilberries would be laid in this in a thin paper bag. My task would be to get them home for the pie before the juice had caused the paper to disintegrate and then I would feel it drip on my shoes and socks
Oh, does anybody pick and sell fresh bilberries now? They made the best pie ever

Fishmongers wrapped fish in waxed paper and then newspaper.

Our butcher used waxed paper and brown paper.

We took a bowl with us when we went to buy eggs or ice cream.

My parents as children took a jug with them when sent to buy milk.

I dont remember 40s and 50s but certainly things Mum was buying in the 60s and early 70s was being wrapped in paper and paper bags!

Mum would keep any that were ok: white ones were kept and reused for food, brown ones were used for rubbish as they had usually come from the greengrocer so were considered dirty

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?

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.

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