Twisty

Remember Snirkles?

They seem a bit strange to me now, but they were a normal candy when I was growing up in Wisconsin.

Snirkles were made by Howard B. Stark Candy Company that started in Milwaukee, WI, and was bought by Necco, who stopped making them. 
[history via]

I can still buy some old-fashioned candy at a candy store downtown, including candy cigarettes.
They've been renamed "candy sticks", but they're still in cigarette-y packaging. 

When I bought some, the clerk told me they can't sell them in their store across the river in St. Paul----they are illegal under any name.

II. The Garbage Glums 

Speaking of twisty things, I'd never put it together before starting my garbage research that Big Business actively supports anti-littering campaigns (like the "Crying Indian" ad of the 1970s) and recycling programs---because they make  manufacturers look good:
their message is,
Hey, if you consumers would just all recycle our cans and bottles properly, we wouldn't have a garbage/pollution problem!

Yes, "It is profitable to let the world go to hell".

I'm trying to think of fun and amusing things to say about this, but I'm failing.

Oh--wait--here's a cat recycling a paper bag:

Basically, recycling is good, but it's a sop.

I was a little surprised to learn how much of a sop it is. Much stuff Americans put in recycling isn't even recycled. There's no market for it, or it's too hard to recycle, or it's sold abroad---the USA exports huge amounts of garbage to places like China that don't have even the environmental protections the US does, where it's often burned for fuel or ends up in landfills anyway.

Plastics are especially hard to recycle:
In the United States, only 9 percent of post-consumer plastic (2.8 million tons) was recycled in 2012. The remaining 32 million tons was discarded, according to World Watch Institute's report "Global Plastic Production Rises, Recycling Lags" (2015).

With all the focus on individual consumers--put your trash into the right recycling container!-- it's no wonder I'd never even heard of the idea of laws to reduce the production of the bottles and cans in the first place. Makes so much sense.
Naturally, manufacturers aren't supporting that.

Here's an interesting and reasonable article on the  topic
"Pervasive Plastics: Why the U.S.Needs New and Tighter Controls", 
by John Wargo, professor of environmental policy, risk analysis, and political science at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

And here's a creative thing to cheer me up: a building by Dratz & Dratz made of bundles of used paper from a supermarket (just temporary, alas):