Flagging tape is one of those modern products which has no traditional equivalent*. Sometimes called 'safety tape' or 'flagging ribbon', this stuff is inch-wide tape with no adhesive backing, wound in a spool, usually about 150 feet in length. It comes in a variety of fluorescent colours - pink and orange seem to be the most popular options.

Flagging tape is often used by surveyors to mark points on a property line, or demarcate the place where a new road is going to demolish part of your front yard. But it also has a host of other uses in rural areas. It can be used to mark out the safety zone during the hunting season; to make barbed wire more visible to animals and people; or to flag large tree stumps, so you don't run a tractor over them. It's also useful for tying to the end of long pieces of lumber in the back of pick-up trucks, so that other people do not run into them, when you're barrelling down the highway.

Of course, this stuff is scientifically designed to protect it from the elements. But since the flagging tape factories are always making more, and it never gets reused, the inevitable conclusion is that someday, every square foot of the earth's surface will be covered by flagging tape.