Clean?

When we sell eggs at the farmers markets, we have to label them as per the Health Department's instructions.

Name, contact information, and date laid or sold.

We depend on our customers to return their cartons, and they also will give us any other cartons they have on hand.  We encourage them to so, because obviously we have to put the eggs in something, and it  makes sense to recycle when possible, and in the end it saves them money, because if we had to buy cartons, we'd have to charge more for the eggs.

It used to say 'Please return your empty cartons' on the label.

Then I added the word 'clean'.  Maybe I need to make the word 'clean' extra large, in flashing fluorescent letters. 

Sometimes we get cartons back that look like this.

That egg shell is stuck in there.  

The outside of the carton looked like this.

On the plus side, they do make handy kindling when we are starting the wood stove.

And those styrofoam cartons, which we don't seem to get as many of these days, at least those you can wash out if they are dirty.