Is anyone as appalled as I am by the television ad for Glad ForceFlex plastic bags?

Yes, yes, they’re supposedly stronger than other bags — they have “Stretchable Strength.”  And if you’re going to use a plastic bag in the first place, it certainly makes sense to use a strong-ish one so the thing doesn’t break apart and fly out of the trash truck to become litter.

But I ask you: How often does that realistically happen?

One of the things that got me was the two boys who were watching their mother clean a dish into the trash. These two little snots were sitting there grading their mother like they were judges on American Idol. Why weren't they cleaning up after dinner?

When mom put the item in the trash bag that wasn’t ForceFlex, it collapsed. Horrors! Mom looked dismayed and the kids groaned. Supposedly, ForceFlex stays in place better because it fits more tightly around the rim of the trash container.

In this day and age, don’t we have a little more to worry about than collapsing trash bags?

But let’s take a closer look, too, at what mom was putting in the trash. It looked like food. As in something that could probably be composted instead. (Although to be fair, I couldn’t tell if it had meat, which you shouldn’t put in a backyard composter.) 

Come to think of it, why didn’t the kids clean their plates to begin with? And if not, why was mom throwing it away? If it wasn't compostable, the food could have been saved for lunch tomorrow.

To me, this ad says it all about what’s wrong with our modern throw-away society.