Packaging-American Style

OK, it's December 28 and I'm sitting at this computer with smoke pouring out of my ears. I've just spent the better part of an hour trying to remove all the stickers, plastic tabs, plastic bubble wrap, molded plastic coverings, boxes, string tags, price stickers, cardboard labels, sticky labels, size chart labels, size labels, and anything else I had to remove to get to the thing inside or under the offending wrapper.

It's nuts! I'm trying to remove all the crap off of the new Christmas clothes in order to wash the stuff prior to wearing it. What? you say....why wash before wearing?You see it's like this....If I wear the stuff before washing it I, or my family, will get all kinds of little red bumps from the probable toxic waste the manufacturer dips the clothing in before it gets shipped to the stores.

For years I've tried to figure out what the stuff is, and I've come to a bunch of conclusions. The best of the conclusions is: the manufacturer had to figure out a way to get rid of the toxins we, the US, probably sent to them for disposal.

Here's how I see it. The US has all kinds of garbage to dispose of, and has no way to get rid of it, since no one wants to make the Grand Canyon into a landfill, so we send it to China. China doesn't know what the Hell to do with it either but they know how to make things out of nothing so they put all the garbage into a compactor to excrete all the liquids out. The liquid has some kind of property that makes clothing stain proof, so they dip all the clothing that's being sent back to the US in the liquid, therefore, giving it back to us.

People like me and my family have sensitive skin so we have to eliminate some of the toxic waste from the clothes prior to wearing. BUT I think the clothes themselves are made out of the garbage we send to China.

After the liquid is removed from the compacted garbage, the solids are then doused with acid to break down the fibers. What is left is a sludge that can be dried and made into cloth. I think this makes perfect sense.

Moral: Wash the new stuff before wearing it. Swear at all the tags, etc as you nearly cut off your fingers removing all the little crappy tags. And be happy....