Affluence is a lot of garbage

SF Gate  1.04.09

Looking back on it now, the straw that broke America's back was the advent of the no-deposit, no-return bottle.

For a generation, Americans had paid a 2-cent deposit on their soft-drink and beer bottles. No decent American, imbued with Yankee thrift, could bear to throw one away...

A decade later, Americans were happily heaving out 30 million no-deposit, no-return bottles a day. Guilt free.

It was the beginning of the nation's new Never-Use-Anything-Twice syndrome.

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