In 1983, while accompanying my father's remains from the US to his homeland Hungary, I took a train from Luxembourg to Budapest. Since I had some time from when my plane landed to train boarding, I bought several beers in Luxembourg for the long ride. I immediately noticed that the bottles were reused, and they weren't even the same color, a couple were green, and a couple were brown- but they were exactly the same size and shape. Great beer, btw! Anyway, at the end of the train ride, I left all the empties in my cabin figuring a cleaner will dispose of them. Then, later on that day, as I ate dinner with my relatives, I noticed the different colors, green and brown, same shape, and I mentioned how they were the same type bottles as the ones I bought in Luxembourg. Of course, I was told. Most of the countries in Europe used the same, interchangeable bottles! How ingenious!
Another thing I noticed was, going into what was their "supermarket- first of all it was much smaller. Then, I realized why- they didn't have 20-something of everything like we have here in the US. Do we really need more than 3 or 4 types of laundry detergent? Why 6 brands of milk? Look at the bread aisle- why so many tens of different types? Isn't 3 or 4 choices enough? Ok, so this was 1983 in an "iron curtain" country. But, even today, the European countries are still much more conservative than we are. Ok, they now have 6 or 7 types of laundry detergent, which I think is more than enough. But, do we need 20-something types? Again, look around your favorite supermarket and look at all the excess.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the answer is other than, back to simplicity, like the original post so eloquently described...
