One use that comes to my mind are trash bags. I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.
My neighbor is in his 80s and we live in what used to be a rural area before urbanization caught up. He told me there wasn't any garbage collection, they put rubish in a small bin and just dumped everything in a hole in the garden when the bin was full. They didn't use any plastic so everything would just decompose. When the hole was full they'd dig another one and that was it.
In rural areas they commonly composted the organic garbage and burned much of the rest. Food scraps were also fed to animals so there was generally very little food waste.
My uncle used to pick up all the food scraps from a local restaurant and feed those to his pigs. It made a mess in his pickup truck, but it was a lot cheaper than commercial pig food.
We still do it. Every kitchen waste goes to the chickens, everything that's compostable goes to a pile in the back of the garden. With two adults we have about three bags going in the recycling bin and one bag in the garbage bin per month. We still have a bit of progress to do by buying less packaged items.
Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.
Uncontrolled burning of trash is much worse than a proper landfill. Modern landfills are constructed with water barriers and do not poison ground water. Old trash dumps were a problem but that is not what is happening in developed nations.
Of course, in some areas of the world, both uncontrolled trash burning and unregulated trash dumps are used.
I think you're talking about two different things.
I think the other post may be talking about people who burn their trash at home, instead of at an industrial scale? It seems like a neighborhood of people burning their batteries and plastics would not be great, compared to an industrial incinerator.
Throw trash in the bin without a bag. Dump trash in your big trash can outside (that still doesn't have a trash bag). That can gets dumped into the garbage truck (truck also does not have a huge trash bag). Wash bin when it gets too dirty/stinky.
Trash bags are just a great time saver and more sanitary. I sure like them.
Before wide availability of plastic bags, reusable bins/buckets were used for trash. It's not even that historic, for example, 1980s USSR did it that way if I recall it correctly.
I'm an old enough gen-Xer to remember using paper grocery bags as a kid. There is a "standard" rectangular kitchen trash can size that used to fit grocery paper bags perfectly. Toss the bag in the galvanized steel trash can and the can is dumped out once a week.
Its a little more labor intensive, you can't dump liquids in a paper bag at least without paper towels, etc.
I was born in the 80s and plenty of people were still just throwing it 'over the hill' or 'in a hole'. There are still remnants of it lying around if you know where to look. About 10 years ago when China was buying lots of scrap iron and steel, the scavengers dragged away all of the metal that was in these places which at least made them look better. You can still spot some old tires now and then.
Burn it and dump it into pits. Of course while that is not really a problem when 95% of your trash is organic with a bit of random iron scrap and most people live on low density farms, it is a problem with modern materials like plastics and other hydrocarbon products and increasing population densities.
