Creative Ways to Cheat the Consumer

[Ron Citerone]

Not to mention the thousands (millions?) of pounds of garbage the little cups add up to create.
K-Cups are an environmental disaster and the inventor said in an interview that he wished he could un-invent them. Since inception, the estimate is that 57 billion of those little cups have been sold. Enough to make a chain that would wrap around the Earth about 72 times.

Coffee grounds themselves, and even the paper filters, are biodegradable and do really well as fertilizer and compost. Not the case with plastic K-cups.
Many Starbucks locations have a little sign inviting customers to just ask for used coffee grounds for the garden.

I still like my Melita Cone with a paper filter every morning, use 1 filter to make 2 cups no plastic waste. I buy name brand coffee when it is on sale for $2.99 a pound at Shoprite.

[dennis thompson]

What a bunch of whiners we have assembled here. :-)

Amen to that, thankfully I'm not at the point where a big (or for that matter any) concern of mine is the price of toilet paper
We all seem so quick to criticize large corporations

[Brian Elfert]

I like the UP&UP toilet paper from Target. The rolls had gotten so loosely rolled that each roll seemed to have hardly any paper on it. Target recently switched to bigger rolls of TP that are tightly rolled again. I have to change the roll a lot less often now.

I don't know if it is a stealth price increase or not as I never paid attention to the square feet of TP I was getting previously. The package is smaller with the rolls tightly rolled so Target saves on shipping and warehousing.

[Jim Becker]

TP. Costco. That is all.

[Brian Elfert]

Amen to that, thankfully I'm not at the point where a big (or for that matter any) concern of mine is the price of toilet paper
We all seem so quick to criticize large corporations

What, you aren't cutting open your toothpaste tubes and using the little bit that remains in the tube? If you value your time at all this is just a total waste of time. There are a lot easier ways to save maybe $5 in your lifetime.

I consider myself to be somewhat frugal, but I'm not doing stupid things like this. People who do this are cheap, not frugal. I choose what I buy carefully with an eye to buying stuff that will last. Frugal is not necessarily about not spending money.