It’s hard for me to explain in words how disturbing I find this. Here’s a manifestation of how we as a culture see “stuff” and how we relate to the material world.
Watching this can change the world. It does make me ill.
The secondhand market should be huge and top of mind. Furniture stores should have 80 percent of the store used goods. Craigslist, etc, is fun but frustrating. I’m not particularly picky or fearful, but person to person is just inefficient.
Also, people have been sold on needing everything to reflect themselves and their tastes and knowledge, sort of catalog/review envy, I feel it myself. But you know, it’s just a chair or a shelf or a food processor or a jacket or whatever: try to embrace serendipity :) They have pens at goodwill, a bag for $2, and it’s all kinds and brands and it will cover your household needs for years rather than leak and rot into a hole in the ground-- that kind of thing, just consider it as often as you can. Once you have that down you will find you need less stuff because you are not using it to represent yourself, just for it’s actual purpose, and you will find it easier to pass things on as well.
Just my drunk advice
You’re absolutely correct in everything you’re saying.
However, we’ve been giving out that exact advice since at least the 1980s and thus far it’s gotten us nowhere significant. There are too many subsidies for plastics manufacturers/petrochemical companies, too many industry lobbies for various forms of manufacturing, and too many lobbyists for it to make a difference.
I absolutely think that folks should buy used, grow their own, reduce/reuse/recycle, and repair. However we’re swimming against a cultural and political tide that turned long ago and while we can take our names off the problem I’m not sure that we can reverse it.
You may be right, but I think by staring it in the face as much as possible we can generate that physical feeling that is what the tide is made of. Politics can turn as they have before. I’m not so sure we are in a “coasting” part of history. Feels pretty choppy and changeable right now. Makes powers that be grip harder, but I’m hoping that’s just a symptom of general readiness.
I sincerely hope you’re right. Please stay in touch.
Wow. That looks really inefficient.
