Canned Goods, paper plates, computer keyboards, disposable contacts, monitors, vacuum cleaners, VCR’s and thousands of other products are thrown away when they no longer work or served a short lived purpose. Items like food containers have become a standard throw away item. That is what disposables are designed to be. They have become a problem but are established as a part of life. Other things, such as major electronics, is disposable because repairing them would be one of three things: physically difficult, as costly as the original or a new replacement, or inconvenient. It has become so typical to toss out non-functioning items that people are surprised when they become aware of services like iPod screen repair, iPhone screen repair, VCR repair services and other options to tossing out products that no longer function properly.
The fact is this is a society that plows through products at an alarming rate. The amount of waste created simply by whim is astonishing. Perfectly good carpets are ripped up and thrown out because someone wants a different color or Berber is in fashion. People trade their cars for a newer model and clean out their closets of good clothes to make room for the latest fashions. Beyond the appalling amount of Styrofoam and plastic bottles that were designed to rapidly become waste is an entire economy built on replacing things with newer versions. The present economy depends on whims of taste and fashion. Excellent furniture, bikes, shoes and other items end up in the trash heap. While some of it does find a second life through garage sales, Goodwill or recycling, much of it doesn’t. The notion of temporary value is deeply embedded in our society.
Temporary value is a way of thinking about the world around us. If everything is easily replaced, then the value of the product is reduced to its function. A dvd player breaks and it is thrown out since a replacement is either going to cost about the same as repair, or the process of getting the repair done through warranty requires boxing and shipping and waiting for three to six weeks. Value is often determined by out of pocket expensesor time and effort weighed with dollars and cents.
Living in a world of throw away products has reveals much larger issues than the obvious environmental complaints. There is also a psychological dulling. People mentality has become accustomed to disposable lives. Our culture has developed a habit of discarding in place of working with or valuing people, places and things. Loyalty to employees and employers has dramatically changed in the last fifty years. Product loyalty has nearly disappeared. Working with the challenges of most personal encounters has increasingly diminished as well judging by the amount of litigation in the family and civil courts.
The benefit of the current recession is that many people are giving broken or well worn items another look. The hit on the wallet may help to change the way value is perceived in all aspects of the living experience.
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