Disposable Life Styles

[Zak33]

Gotta say: the "civilised" world is chucking more and more stuff away. This thread is aimed at discussing and talking about what we should and shouldn't throw away.

Lets start with me going to the local tip. A place where household refuse is taken and discarded to make my living space more.....clear.

The que, all day, every day, is quite unreal. The volume...the sheer mammoth volume of stuff in each car, every day, took my breath away. But I looked into my rear view mirror, and saw the boot-load that I had, from my little 2 bed house, and knowing i had another trip to make yet, I got guilty. It's all rubbish to me. But somewhere.....its a commodity. Its definately a resource.

Luckily the council does try to recycle stuff. All the subject matter in my boot, from hard woods, to cardboards, metal to garden waste, has designated skips to be put into. Papers, magazines, even fabric.

BUT...how on EARTH (literally) did we get to this position?

Packaging? Money? TV lifestyle programs? I was chucking a pile of 2x3 timber that I've had in my garage for 3 years, which is now warped from damp. If I need more I'll buy new.....straight. And the last 3 bits of laminate flooring that are also warped now. Don't need 'em anyway.

Holy cack...this is a forest we're talking about. I see people on telly living under structures made from lesser timber...and I'm binning it. Entire family's living under lesser things than my SHED. (Which I also need a new one of. Which is less than £150 complete. ie less than I spend on graphics cards yearly. )

SHOULD OUR GOVERNMENT BE SHIPPING THIS OUT TO A POOR NATION?

Hell...why blame the Government...should I OWN THE PROBLEM MYSELF? It was ME who got the stuff. My fault. I'm to blame.

What to do?

Next...charity bags. As I have noticed, MOST clothing/blanket collection bags coming to my letter box every week are NOT charity bags.

They are from companies who sell these clothes abroad.

Am I wrong to fill it with the blankets that the Oxfam shop DIDN'T WANT, cos they can't sell them and have loads of. Saves me driving to the tip, using over a gallon of fuel, worsening the greenhouse gas effect. (that's it Zakky...make yourself feel better)

Should I have kept them until a REAL charity company DID put a collection bag through my door? When will they be here? I haven't seen one for over a year, but I've had over a dozen from the Lakslava (from memory) clothing foundation. A profitable company I presume as they keep at it. Me and my neighbours do this a lot. Its a feel good factor that might not exist. What if the people of the African continent pay more for them than I paid (in relation to income)
Christ...what if they paid more for them than I paid PERIOD!!!!!

What to do? Old video tapes? Hundreds...between me and Sair we had over 1000 audio tapes....from over 25 years of recording. What to do with them?

and yet it is cheaper to buy a new plastic "item" of whatever "thing" I need than to fix/clean/mend the old one! What to do?

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that plastic washing up bowl....its scratched around the base, and needs a damn good scrubbing, for hygiene...maybe a squirt of Mr Muscle to clean the scratches EVERY TIME I USE IT....but a new one was 35p That Mr Muscle is not cheap..and it's not good for the environment. (I dont KNOW that for fact....guessing...sorry Nicho if you oick me up on that)

Disposable? Damn right..old one...into the bin bag

What are we doing?

[Rave]

Well, we could easily sustain it, if it weren't for the fact that we're running out of oil. Landfill isn't actually much of a problem, realistically we could carry on dumping for years at current rates without running out of room, but the price of that 35p washing bowl will start going back up as the price of oil, and hence plastic, goes up.

I know all about the disposable society, and I benefit greatly from it, since my hobby is bin raiding. I wouldn't feel guilty about giving those blankets to a profit making company rather than a charity shop, since the bin I've got most from is....a charity shop one. I guess some shops are better than others, but this one makes no effort to recycle donated items that they can't sell. It all gets chucked, and when I'm not there to rescue it, wasted. I have on occasion taken complete bags of clothing from their bin and dunked them in the rag bank at a local recycling spot on my way home, although in fairness they've been a bit better about that recently.

My feeling is that if we want to continue to live the lives that we in the first world have become accustomed to, then we need to invest massively in renewable energy, and we need to do it NOW while we can easily afford it.

Rich :¬)

[Zak33]

but the timber.....I just put it away for another job...it got wet...its in the way....I'm moving...I just chucked it. Get new when I need it!!

Ditto carpet...I mean...that just doesn't rot down does it....there's some where I used to walk my dogs...I was back there the other day..its been there about....ohh....7 years...its STILL in tact!!!!

In a field....

so when we buy new carpet for out living room, and bin the old stuff, it gets "land filled"...and it just sits there

[TiG]

Well if anyone watched the Channel 4 news last night, you will have seen an appaling report on what China are doing with our electrical waste, cpu's old tele's anything with chips etc in it.

They are literally stripping them down on stoves, taking all the useful reusable bits and making use of them. If any of you know how toxic solder etc is now you will know the immense health risk of doing this without well ventilated areas and specialist equipment.

This is illegal in China yet, as with all things, someone goes ahead and cleans up and turns waste into a market economy. But some poor people in some remote corner of the world are cleaning up the western worlds mess, and because of that suffering poor health and reduced life expectancy...

Its not a new thing though, the "elite" few always take advantage of the many, kids going coal mining at the age of 12 during the industrial revolutions...

You know why?, and its down to one single thing, and that EVIL thing is MONEY!.

I personally believe that only in a world without money will things like this ever stop...

How you get to that state i've no idea, and i'm sure some people will think it could only be chaos, but then we think with our current mind set. Think if money didn't exist, other forms of trade/enterprise would have to exist. Working would return some form of accomodation, food to feed the world equally.

I love to dream of this world and what it might be like, knowing that i'm never going to see it in my lifetime....

TiG

[Rave]

I love to dream of this world and what it might be like, knowing that i'm never going to see it in my lifetime....

The harsh truth is that the world's resources can't really sustain a first world lifestyle for the billion or so people who currently have one, let alone the 5bn who currently do not.

Rich :¬)

[Gunbuster]

The harsh truth is that the world's resources can't really sustain a first world lifestyle for the billion or so people who currently have one, let alone the 5bn who currently do not.

Rich :¬)

Agreed.
a) There are too many people.
b) Current 1st world lifestyle has a high material cost.

I used to horde stuff because I hated to see it dumped, thankfully the council first made recycle bins available in a local shopping car park and secondly started picking up bins from homes. I used to buy lots of magazines, now I buy 1 regularly and an occasional extra if there is a good cover disk.
I still find it hard to replace stuff that still works. Storage space is the main reason I replaced some of my anime videos with DVDs(you can get a whole series in the same space as one VHS box). Some people have a stigma attached to 2nd hand or old goods. I'm not so bothered, in many cases I'd rather give something away than see it dumped. I did that recently with an old computer case which Bruno got.

Fine if something is truly broken/unfixable it has to be dumped. On the other hand, I have some spare CPUs and simms sitting wait for a new home

[Zak33]

but to me, it is EASIER and TIDIER to just bin it and buy new! and that is SO WRONG.

I know MONEY is key....but to the punters its not. It's something else. Its convenience. It MUST BE.

OK...if its down to money, then WHY didt I just clean the washing up bowl by hand. It would take 2 minutes. If it WAS avbout money I would NOT have purchased a new one. ok...only a few pence but still money.

Its convenient.

Hand a set of 4 wooden chairs to someone on middle income (£18k to £20k) and tell them they will suit their kitchen if they sand them down by hand, and undercoat/ prime and then paint them.

After 10 minutes of sanding the same intricate piece of wood, with all the fiddly bits, the person will almost always look for a quicker way?

I know! Lets go to the DIY shop.
Buy paint stripper and a wire brush...and rubber gloves.

But while in B&Q or Homebase, they see a new set of chairs for £150. Or less...and with the 10% discount vouchers....

Guess what?

Go on....
and guess what you see in the skip the next weekend?

NOTE: I AM GUILTY...not pointing any accusing fingers here....except into a mirror

[Rave]

Don't put them in the skip- Freecycle them! I pretty much guarantee someone will come and pick them up if there's a freecycle group close to you. Go here and have a look:

http://www.freecycle.org/display.php...00e8954795d77b

Rich :¬)

[Zak33]

blimey....good site

[Lee H]

oooh free garden chairs lol

On a serious note - maybe its because "todays" society is sooo disposable that this may be the cause. Take for example razors, nappies, carrier bags, cameras have all gone the route of use once and throw away. I'm sure earlier generations didn't have all these fancy items did they

Also, in the past life seemed more "chilled" ( if thats the right word ) with people having more time for family life and stuff like that. Now, fastforward to 2004 and life is so hectic with people having to work more hours and also society in general moving towards 24 hr EVERYTHING to try and accomidate people who work shift work or just plain crazy shifts, with more places opening weekends this in turn has a dramatic effect on homelife. Rather than having the weekend for DIY i.e Sat and Sun, most people now only have Sunday so this is 1 day that the DIY needs to be done. Now I for sure would choose a session of 20 minutes removing paint via paintstripper than 2 hours of elbow grease and plenty of scrubbing.

maybe its a combination of the above and the fact we're getting lazier - hence the obese levels rising, who knows.