disposal of polystyrene

lol funny. I would assume it was all made from spoiled food starches, mouldy, contaminated and so on.

NT

plastic packing takes much less energy to make than paper fibre based, hence the use of plastic bags now.

ahh, i got ya

Im confused, theres no such thing as expanded straw, as far as i know anyway. Nor any way it could be expanded to use as packing - though no doubt someone will figure it out. Would be a great thing if they do, straw is plentiful and green.

yes. Making decisions takes time, costs money. Wrong decisions result in damaged goods, and your energy savings undone 100fold.

there must? what are they?

Consideration is why we use what we do. Polystyrene is used to reduce goods damage, it would waste more energy to not use it.

You need to tell us what the alternative option is youre suggesting. As far as I can see there isnt one, we're doing as good as we can, in most cases.

NT

Same here...the frequent 'flyers' are quite tempting. And they do a wider range of stuff than I ever realise...not all of it rock bottom prices, but mostly..

Have just been tempted by the one piece disposable overalls for just over a pound... (for SWMBO, of course...)

Right. Thanks for patiently explaning all of the above.

OUCH!

Oh good, it's not just us being picky then!

Yes I remember our local one being like that. Now it's mostly sound, light, toys ... and certainly not as well clued-up staff. If they don't know something or can't find it they sigh and blame HO who "are always changing things" :-(

Your tip about the white goods parts source could be useful. At the moment we have our own pet supplier (Regam) for that sort of thing but they've been in the same place for donkeys years and it can't last for ever, I've a feeling that the area is going to be developed.

So thanks again,

Mary

Oh ...

In that case I'll resist looking.

Mary well perhaps a tiny peek won't harm ...

That's £7.20 ... (up to 4Kg parcel service)

I'll think about it. Didn't someone say something about a website?

Mary

Perhaps I used the wrong tense. Back in the eighties a son did his masters on alternative uses of straw and various forms of the material were used in packaging, one was certainly a method which used it very finely chopped and 'expanded' by bonding it with some other material - not a man-made plastic. But I can't remember what and can't fine the thesis. It might have been in another part of the world even. I was excited by it because pod waste from OSR was used in the same way.

So many things which happened then never took off.

Straw is a problem for the agricultural industry, even with shorter stalked varieties there's far too much of it. The i.c.e. has a lot to answer for ...

...

I think youre reading of 'must' and my intention are perhaps different ...

I don't understand that last sentence.

Mary

RS stands for "RS". It has never stood for "Radio Spares", or anything else. Oh no, certainly not. They can get quite vehement about this if you ask them 8-) I'm surprised they even still keep packaging in the same colours (although it's more yellow than the old cream and brown).

I don't know what their excuse for the pervese rswww.com was. And the foot-long Broadvision URLs were another terrible idea.

When you don't provide context for your missives?

Surely the previous name of the company was RadioSpares? Or at least, they used to market stuff with that name on the packaging.

But (many years ago now) they decided that 'RS Components' was a better name...

Well, rs.com is/was already Rocket Software. And Nominet don't allow top level names of only two characters...it was still a silly choice!

;-) Better not show them the 50th aniversary radiospares catalogue I have on the shelf then!

They must lose a certain amount of business simply because it is impossible to deep link to their site...

You too? That's why they call me tripod :-)

Well worth getting the dead tree version of the catalogue as well (and when you try picking up its two and a half thousand pages you will appreciate that is an appropriate name!), since the web site is very poor in comparison. They also have a parts finder service where you can phone or email them details of the part you are looking for and they will try to track it down.

Slippery slope... that was how I got hooked ;-)

The firm was definitely called Radiospares (it might have been Radio Spares) originally. They supplied (you've guessed) radio spares.

At some time after they had diversified in the late 60s/early 70s they changed the name to IIRC RS components, and thus RS.

Those that have dealt with them since the early days still refer to them as radiospares, whether their corporate ego geeks approve or not.

I lied about the other copy, it was put for recycling but hadn't gone. The green box collection was this morning and the catalogue wasn't in it... So if anyone feels the need.

I think you may have missed the tongue firmly in Andy's cheek! ;-)

What ? RS have a website ? 8-)

It must be one of the few websites of such age, size and budget where it's still easier to search the paper catalogue.

I remember back in '98 / '99 working on a large (famously large) ecomm site and using RS as an exemplar of what _not_ to do, In particular it stopped me ever using BroadVision. 6-7 years later, and they still haven't fixed most of the obvious brokenness.

When I have time ... it's so lovely today that I'm doing things in the garden which have been hanging fire for about fifteen years - it's very satisfying but I KNOW I'm going to ache :-(

Mary