Do you remember when everything used to take a lot longer to get done, and how there were usually no less than fifty steps to get there? I’m talking like the 1800s and earlier, and how absolutely everything was made by hand. I mean, can you imagine that? For instance, if you were to walk into a general store there would be barrels full of “goods”, and those barrels were not something slapped together on an assembly line. Making barrels was actually a specialty job, and it still is, and that person is called a “cooper”. A barrel was actually a very complex and deliberate design, and required numerous steps to get the wooden slats to bend, and the hoops to lay in the right spots.
What does any of this have to do with bin liners, you may ask. Well, before we had bins we had barrels. Sometimes I just have to marvel at the progression of things. We couldn’t even just stop at bins, mass-produced and disposable as they are. We went on to develop bin liners, which go in the bins to better sustain the product inside, and to prolong the life of the bin as well.
Let’s face it, someone probably invented bin liners because they knew they were going to be moving soon and they didn’t want to waste all of those boxes. So they started lining the boxes with garbage bags, and then later saving the bins to take home and pack with pots and pans. It turns out the CEO was secretly working in the warehouse that day and saw the genius invention, and later approached this person with an amazing business opportunity: to co-own the patent for bin liners. So the original thrifty idea wound up making them a ton of money, and the moral of the story is that they never had to worry about saving boxes again. That story flows so nicely it just might be true…
The actual moral of this story, what I’m really talking about, is that bin liners are a smart business move. When we mail an old sweater to our little sister in college we probably wrap it in a plastic bag first, because who knows what could happen to that sucker on the way. It could be left out in the rain, and then driven through a dust storm.
The UPS driver could spill his energy drink on it or ants could try to infiltrate because you never washed it after dripping spaghetti all over it. Despite it all, wrapping the sweater saved your sister from potentially unwrapping a rag. It’s the same concept with bin liners. Like I said: smart business move.
