Oh it was delightful. They were open late night, too, so it was a frequent midnight snack during the driving years of high school. Sadly, C&C burned down several years back and, in true northern RI form, it remains a vacant lot. Putting Cindy's on my list, though!

Coffee and Cream in North Smithfield used to do this. They had a peanut butter and jelly muffin that, when buttered and grilled, was absolute heaven.

I *just* listened to an episode of @npr.org Throughline about this and was like "How has no one made a Garfield biopic yet? Dude is utterly fascinating!" And now here we are.

www.npr.org/2025/04/24/1...

Prioritizing access to clean, safe public drinking water.

These problems are intersectional and should be addressed as such. But the solution lies in the opposite direction that we have been looking for decades. And what we're doing now ain't working.

www.providencejournal.com/story/news/l...

eliminates toxic substances from packaging, addresses commercial and residential waste, and reimburses municipalities for the cost of their waste management programs. Encouraging the establishment of scaled reuse/refill infrastructure for food service establishments, beverages, household items etc.

Banning the most unnecessary and harmful single-use products. Encouraging the adoption of a strong statewide beverage container deposit program (aka bottle bill). Supporting efforts to adopt a strong plastic packaging and recycling bill that establishes statutory reduction and recycling goals...

There are policies currently working their way through the state house, and several more that haven’t been yet proposed, that could stem the tide of waste, reduce collection and disposal costs, clean up the environment, and reduce plastic pollution.

These are not policy solutions because they do not get at the root of the policy problem.

Cities and towns should instead be supporting policy efforts to reduce the waste that they have to manage. They can work with supportive legislators, passing resolutions of support, and being vocal.

We propose raising taxes on homeowners to pay for increased recycling costs in municipal budgets. We throw millions of dollars at infrastructure upgrades and education campaigns as new types of products and packaging shift the sand beneath our feet.

turnto10.com/i-team/on-yo...

Anyway, as a state, we are so laser-focused on dealing with these issues the way we always have that we have mostly neglected to look for other real policy solutions. Instead, we try to educate, shame, and fine residents.

www.providencejournal.com/story/news/l...

An aside: this thread is only looking at this issue through the waste management lens. I’m not even touching the public health crisis unfolding before our eyes as researchers publish more and more studies about microplastics in the human body and the toxic substances with which they are made.

And we hyper-focus on trash and plastic pollution (aka “litter”, a term that misses a ton of nuance about how plastics and other waste end up in the environment).

litterfree.ri.gov

Some (but not nearly enough) state officials are trying to figure out how to extend the life of the landfill, and even fewer are thinking about what we will do with our waste once it reaches capacity. (h/t @robesmit.bsky.social)

ecori.org/rhode-island...

We continue to invest taxpayer money into infrastructure for, and education and outreach about, a deeply flawed system. Municipalities are investing scarce resources to incentivize residents to “do the right thing” as they shell out millions in fines and tipping fees for diverted recycling loads.

We now know that the petrochemical industry reportedly knew that recycling plastics wasn’t a viable solution, but instead was an alleged elaborate PR scheme. Plastic cannot infinitely recycled like glass, aluminum, and paper. Yet that's not what we were led to believe.

www.npr.org/2020/09/11/8...

In the 1970s, recycling became the “solution” for managing much of this waste. It was moderately successful at dealing with certain metals, paper, cardboard, and glass, but once plastic was added to the mix, recycling programs began to show their limits.

They leave it to towns and cities and ultimately residential and commercial end-users to figure it out logistically and financially. They also have made the end-user the problem in this story; that is, people that “do the wrong thing”

Brandowners and packaging companies are consistently putting products and materials out into the economy and towns and cities are left to figure out how to deal with it all.

Industry has socialized the cost of dealing with their often toxic, often difficult to dispose of products.