Giving things away is a massive pain in the ass. Have you ever tried to sell things on Craigslist or Facebook? Or even give them away for free? You get all kinds of dolts with all kinds of problems and complicated ideas about when and where to meet, assuming they don't just completely flake. There's haggling and begging and bizarre, sometimes unsettling interactions. As a result, I tend to just trash things more often than not.
Buy my current neighborhood does a good job. People leave furniture and other items on the sidewalk regularly and other people take them (oftentimes seemingly instantly!). Half of my furniture is from the street, some of it very nice. And there are Facebook groups where people post stuff that's on the street, or things in their home they want to give away (though then you are back to making plans with weirdos).
>People leave furniture and other items on the sidewalk regularly and other people take them (oftentimes seemingly instantly!). Half of my furniture is from the street, some of it very nice
A bit of a tangent, but I was recently shocked to learn that there are places in the US where this is discouraged. I suggested leaving a couch out on the curb when the owner had the same reservations as you about FB/CL and I was told that the cops will come by and spraypaint "BEDBUGS" on any furniture in an attempt to curb the neighborhood/city/regional bedbug problem.
I was told that second hand stores are similarly cagey about taking any used furniture, so the options are FB/CL or a dumpster.
> A bit of a tangent, but I was recently shocked to learn that there are places in the US where this is discouraged.
I'm not in the US (UK) but I wouldn't do it myself just because I think it looks 'trashy'.
It's also probably not technically allowed (unless you have a front garden/drive and it's on your property) - but local councils will collect large appliances/furniture by prior arrangement too, I imagine the details vary but one I checked a while ago for example would do one such collection a year for free, some small fee if you needed an additional one that year.
Finland has a good system for this. You can take no-longer-wanted household items to your nearest kierrätyskeskus ("recycling center"). They sort thru it, toss the unsellable, check over checkoverable things (think: stereos and sweaters and jigsaw puzzles) to verify they're OK (and affix a label), and put'em on a shelf with a price tag.
These centers are a wonderful source of super-affordable second-hand stuff. The environmental benefits are yuuuge.
Britain (or at least Surrey) has the same system - Community Recycling Centres [1] will have a shipping container where you can leave things that a Charity Shop [2] might be able to re-sell.
Goodwill in the states does this, but you have to wait in a long car line for an hour to donate, so it isn’t hassle free. But we’ve been there a few times with toys and some furniture.
Wait, how do they check these over? Do they solve them to make sure that a quarter of the pieces aren't missing. Do they count the pieces in a 5000pc puzzle?
> Have you ever tried to sell things on Craigslist or Facebook? Or even give them away for free?
I’m in France so not on Craigslist or Facebook but on LeBonCoin.
When I moved out I sold most of my furniture (table, chairs, desk…) and gave away a few things (pans, toaster…). Giving things is even easier than throwing away, people come the same day to take it away no matter the size.
I’ve never had a single issue with selling stuff online. People are nice and happy to get stuff at a discount, or free stuff.
I’m an avid reader of /r/ChoosingBeggars on Reddit because I find it funny but it doesn’t relate at all to my experience.
> You get all kinds of dolts with all kinds of problems and complicated ideas about when and where to meet, assuming they don't just completely flake.
Again, not my experience. The seller gets to pick the spot, that’s common sense and I’ve never seen anyone pick on that.
Agreeing where to meet is a common American thing that stems from a mutual feeling of paranoia. Namely:
- The seller doesn't want the buyer to know where they live in case the buyer comes back to stalk them.
- The buyer doesn't want to meet the seller is some random alley carrying cash, lest the seller rob them.
For this reason, most Craigslist transactions I've had where the thing being sold was over $100 in value, we'd meet in a mall or bank parking lot, where no one would be stupid enough to try to rob the other party in broad daylight.
> Giving things away is a massive pain in the ass.
I give things away on Craigslist and sell things on there too. It is pretty simple.. put up good pictures, good descriptions, and treat the people who are picking your unwantables as people who are doing you the favor of taking those items off your hands.
This is something I see all the time, asking for delivery on large items like furniture. If you're getting a $100+ item for free, it shouldn't be too much to ask that you do the legwork to arrange transportation.
Yeah, but how can you be so cruel to not be willing to deliver those old (but still very valuable) large speakers for free to a single mother of 12 that lives about 1.5 hours away and ruin those kids' christmas that way, you monster (despite your ad explicitly stating that it was a pickup-only item)? /s
I had a few annoying experiences trying to get rid of perfectly good items for free (as well as a good number of non-problematic perfectly smooth experiences). But those few annoying experiences seriously make me feel hesitant to deal with it again. Casually browsing r/ChoosingBeggars from time to time isn't helping the situation either.
Living in an impoverished area in a so-called third world country with absurd levels of inequality, most people cannot afford things that are considered for some as "basic" - nice bed sheets, a phone, a TV, pots and pans.
Wherever I or someone offers something to give away in a Facebook Marketplace local group, within seconds dozens of people will ask you to give it for them, offer to go immediately to claim it and everything - as look as what you offer is in a decent condition.
China was like that also. If you had some furniture you wanted to get rid of, ask the guard or someone at the property management office, they know someone who would take it.
Also apartment complexes sometimes have rules about who can carry furniture on the premises (for damage liability), so good luck hauling that massive bed/couch/etc. downstairs waiting for someone to pick it up... especially if you don't have friends/family nearby who can help at that precise time.
> Giving things away is a massive pain in the ass. Have you ever tried to sell things on Craigslist or Facebook? Or even give them away for free?
I admit I don't know the situation in other places, but where I live it's trivial to give things away for free, or to donate them. There are multiple non-profit second hand stores where you can quite literally just drop stuff off outside their door at any hour of the day. They'll access it and if it's fit for resale they'll put a small price on it and handle the rest.
I've seen examples of towns that have specific "free stuff" weeks where people put out things that aren't garbage and anyone can take them. I quite like the idea, because it means people know they won't have to root though actual garbage.
Where I am, there are very often boxes with "to take", there's a city wide Facebook group for giving things away, and our German nextdoor clone also has many people give things away for free in the neighborhood. For books, there are also public bookshelves, and for clothes, there are charitable organizations.
I've used all of those multiple times (mainly to give things away, but also getting things for free), and it's not a hassle at all.
I've given away about 30 things on ebay-kleinanzeigen, and found that it varies from zero hassle to considerable, mostly depending on the kind of item but also on pure luck.
I posted a double stroller (with 6 very clear pics and web links to the manufacturer's web site) on my local 'buy nothing' FB group a couple of days ago.
Three people replied saying they could pick up 'tomorrow' (i.e. yesterday).
1st person: no reply to my DMs after 12 hours (even though I DM'd them a minute after they commented).
2nd person: wanted more info about the condition (which is clear in the pics) and needs to check with someone else before they commit.
I'm still hoping it will be taken by someone before the end of the weekend.
Too lazy to do buy nothing but I have a lot of friends that like surfing the page as a hobby. I just put stuff outside and list it on craigslist free. Usually gone in an hour but I'm in a city.
In the Netherlands there’s a place called “Boomerang” where one can dispose of used or partial broken things. The workers there (I guess some are volunteering) sort them out, repair and put them up for sale. So really good stuff are available for really low price.
All that is to say, it wasn’t pain in the ass when I was in the Netherlands.
Have you ever tried giving away stuff or selling it on Craigslist/Marketplace...?
There really are dolts out there. It's not normal scheduling, it's bizarro requests and just scummy stuff like you arrange to sell something for $40, go meet them somewhere with the item, then they insist they've only got $20 take-it-or-leave-it because they know you already went to the trouble to bring it and meet them and at this point you'd rather just cut your losses. "Dolts" is being generous, really.
Or you're giving something away for free and they want you to travel an hour to them to deliver it... not to mention the constant requests for info about the item that is already answered clearly directly in the listing. Dolts.
The poster is giving it away for free so your complaint is not what they were talking about.
But if that's a common problem for you, tell them up front before meeting them it will be payment in full or you'll walk away. They're wasting their time too.
The poster literally said "Have you ever tried to sell things on Craigslist or Facebook?".
So yes my complaint is what they're talking about.
And no, I don't need to tell them it will be payment in full. That's already understood by any adult. And why wouldn't they still pull the same trick? (For the record, I don't sell it to them, so they do waste their time but it wastes mine too.)
We do it for the same reason nature does. Building new things is far easier than maintaining and modifying old things forever. It's a tremendous waste for old plants and animals and humans to die and throw away all their accumulated resources and experience, but nature tolerates it because maintaining and/or modifying bodies over time eventually just becomes too hard.
I can see some objections of the form "that's not why nature does it, it's because genes need to evolve". Well, nature could have had our own genes changing and evolving in our bodies over time, if that made sense. It doesn't. The root of the problem is it's too difficult to repair and modify old things. Much easier to throw away and replace.
The difference is that nature recycles everything. But that isn't always constant. There have definitely been times in evolutionary history when places have been full of natural waste of one type or another and it took a while for nature to figure out how to recycle it. One day maybe we can get there too.
I have a related observation, based on my own behaviour and my experience, which is near extinction of electronic/electrical appliance repair shops where I live. And I wonder if it's related to we getting used to instant gratification.
Growing up in India in the 90s, if I discovered a new song in radio/television buying a tape was nearly a month long affair. From that I went to instantaneous access to nearly any song in any language. I'm not complaining, I absolutely love it. However this need for instant gratification is sort of leaking into physical objects, so to speak. So if a physical device malfunctions I want to get it instantly working again which is almost impossible so I reach out for the next best thing which is to buy a replacement.
And in the 90s it was totally OK for our home appliances, like TV, mixer/grinder etc., to be taken to repair shops. However, I've seen a gradual decline of such shops. It could also be due to decreasing reliability and repairability.
I recently took a 4 year old space heater (in the form factor of a small wood burning stove with a fireplace effect) to be repaired. I guessed that the thermal fuse had blown and the blower was dirty.
It cost $45 (CAD) to have it opened and another $95 to complete the repairs, which is very close to the cost I paid for the device in the first place. Not that I'm complaining. The guy said he completely disassembled and cleaned the blower motor in addition to replacing the fuse. I wouldn't be surprised if it lasts even longer now. Plus I do like the way it looks and fits in my office.
My point is that I understand why there are few repair shops. When North American labour costs for repairs end up being the same price as buying a replacement off the shelf, no wonder people throw away working and nearly working devices.
Perhaps I could have repaired it myself. I don't know. I'm pretty nervous about the idea of fiddling with 120 volt devices with zero training.
I think part of that reluctance to just tear into it yourself, or if not you then any number of ordinary people you know equivalent to yourself (ie, not an electronics repair tech by trade, anf if not you then your brother, wife, kid, co-worker, etc), is actively created by companies that sell stuff.
And if you're a bit too brave and self determinant, and overcome the soft pressure like the warranty sticker or the manual or peer pressure, then there is always the insurance based fear of liability for burning down a house and killing someone (by doing a dead simple repair on a blender or something) to keep you in line.
"Was saving that $30 worth killing someone?" Well in reality there is no such question and so attempting the repair is not answring "yes" to it. But for most people it's a real factor keeping them afraid to touch anything.
I'm saying, your reluctance isn't likely really just your own natural reluctance, it's pretty much instilled and reinforced in a bunch of indirect deniable ways.
Only a few years ago it was perfectly normal for almost anyone to do all kinds of things that are practically unthinkable to people from one or two generations later. The human animal didn't actually change that much to create such different behavior, so the difference must be explained some other way.
The N1500 VCR cost somewhere around $9500 in modern dollars on release in 1972. Of course you'd take that to a repair shop. It's not a device you'd buy on a whim, it was a major luxury you'd expect to use a lot for a long time.
Once mass manufacturing takes hold and you can buy stuff for $50-$100, it's just not worthwhile to repair.
On a $9500 device, 3 hours of technician's time to fix it is peanuts. On a $100 device, you might as well buy a new one, even before the parts are accounted for. You better hope it's something simple to replace and that it's not some sort of design flaw.
I think decreasing costs of (often overseas) manufacturing, increased costs of always-domestic repair labor, (related to the first) increased costs of spare parts as a percentage of new price, and increased reliability of electronics.
I’m a hardcore DIYer and try to repair a lot of things. What I find interesting is how few people even consider repairing something (either DIY or using a shop) and even when I show them how easy/cheap some things are to DIY, they can’t be bothered next time.
Repair or wear parts that sell-through a lot are often still quite cheap/cheaper than decades ago. I seem to recall paying $40-60 in 90s money for a set of brake pads in the 90s. They’re often $25-50 in 2020s money now. Yesterday, I ordered 3 sets of pads (F/R for one car, F for the other) which will be delivered to my house for $74 total.
I also do the same, and I'm happy there are people like us who gives objects a second life :-)
The only appliances I had to recycle can't be repaired in any way or it cost about the same of a new one, but I rarely have that situation. Living 15 minutes apart from a appliance scrapyard, where parts are a lot cheaper than new, also improves that.
Repair services for consumer products were only ever economically viable in an era of cheap labor. Failure diagnosis and repair requires a higher degree of technical skill than assembly line production. The people capable of doing that work can now mostly find better jobs than doing retail repair work.
This is a positive change for society as a whole, but it does increase waste. Instead of repairing it would be better to use a system of refundable deposits to encourage consumers to return broken devices to manufacturers for recycling instead of throwing them into landfills.
Corrolay for techies: ... or why we go out of our way to make users throw away perfectly working things.
I still remember the shift from Windows XP to Vista. Many users where absolutely uninterested in updating: They were perfectly fine with the amount of features Windows XP offered, had gotten used to the UI, had set up their system to work well for them, etc. Microsoft had to run a sustained campaign of advocacy, nag-screens, and end of support to bring those users to update.
It's different when old things require ongoing support.
Your old mixer will keep working without ongoing support, but software generally requires continued updates for security patches, bug fixes, OS updates, new HW, etc.
Thus, there's a cost _to the vendor/mfr_ for older software that doesn't exist for older appliances, tools, clothes, etc.
XP is too porous to safely use today apart from offline or very narrow usage. If it were hardened and hardware didn't evolve too much then it'd be fine to keep using.
Reality is that hardware and the web require a certain amount of change in the OS. And OS vendors cannot afford to support old versions indefinitely.
Not completely wrong, but you could justify all kinds of planned obsolescence with that reasoning: "Sure the device technically still works, but it's too costly for us to bear the maintenance burden, so we have to brick it"
I don't mean to excuse every such decision, certainly not Windows 11. Rather I just don't think it's realistic to expect any major OS version to be eternal and hardened, unless it's a niche use.
XP's architecture had to be replaced or it would have held things back. Vista may not have been as ambitious as Longhorn but it was an improvement. Not saying every major release was justified, only that we couldn't have stayed on XP forever. Or at least not without sacrificing some improvements and innovation.
Windows 11 though seems entirely arbitrary, especially since TPM requirements appear inconsistent and capricious.
>XP's architecture had to be replaced or it would have held things back.
Same can be said about Linux, but the kernel is evolving internally without being replaced. With enough eBPF modules Linux can act like a microkernel or even driven kernel.
held back how? at least it had a working search bar.
Seriously, the only improvement I can think of since XP is the gpu resource monitor in the Task Manager. I think maybe the search bar worked better in Windows 7 before getting broken in 10?
IIRC the driver model and general security improved in fundamental ways. Some could've probably been back ported but not every improvement.
Consider that even XP wasn't the same from first release until SP3. It was really two or three OS's, just with fewer user facing changes than Vista and later major releases.
Windows 10 search is much better if you turn off web searches. But of course Microsoft being Microsoft require you to modify some obscure registry key to do that.
There's lots of reasons why something like a working microwave might get thrown out. Eg:
* I have a small kitchen and just never use it
* I have a small kitchen and it lacks some feature (eg, grill) that would save me another device.
* Grandma can't made head or tails of these weird buttons. Seriously, my current mirowave damn near has hieroglyphs on it, and it's quite recent. Microwave UI is just appalling. Feel free to ask for a picture if curious.
* We remodeled the kitchen and it's no longer a good fit
* We had an extra one for some reason. Eg, child had to move back in with their parents, brought their stuff.
* It's too small
* I'm moving to another country and not taking it with me
As for why not sell it/list it somewhere? You can buy a microwave for $50, so it may just not be worth the effort. You have to do all this negotiating/chatting/texting and agreeing with people about who will be where when, and if you're not in a bad need of a few bucks it may just not be worthwhile.
> Seriously, my current mirowave damn near has hieroglyphs on it
I bought a Smeg oven. I wanted and oven and wanted one with very few features to avoid complexity.
I foolishly bought one with two knobs, as it looked simple.
It has heaps of features which you access via twiddling one knob, both together, pushing down on one while twiddling the other, and a variety of other methods which I don’t understand. Setting the clock takes me 10 minutes.
I bought a small Toshiba EM925A5A-BS microwave, which was top ranked by The Wirecutter at the time.
Two years later, the light begins flickering. Now it just doesn't come on at all.
I google up how to replace the lightbulb. Turns out, you can't and this issue is common amongst owners of these microwaves. It's amazing they can't spend the extra dollar or two in components and make the bulb replaceable. I imagine a lot of these Toshiba microwaves are in dumps now.
I'd have a hard time trying to give this thing away with a defective light. I'll probably be stuck with it finally stops working altogether, and then it will end up in a landfill.
That's pretty infuriating. I have look for your model online, and apparently Toshiba decided it was reasonable to use a LED lamp instead, and they didn't make them good.
If you're used to disassembly appliances to repair them it isn't difficult to change it to a new one, or even change it to a common bulb + socket system. You shouldn't have too much danger doing that, after disconnecting it for a couple of hours, because the high voltage lines (red stranded wires) are far from that part.
Yeah, I've been thinking about just soldiering in a new LED, but haven't had time. Replacing it with a socket is a better idea, though. Same amount of effort the first time, far less when it comes time to replace the bulb again...
Was just thinking the other day how funny it is that people throw away old radios, but then buy white noise machines to gekommen their babies sleep. You can get plenty of noise from a radio, all the way from white to brown. And music, too.
How much electricity must be saved in order to offset the manufacture of one white noise device, including the materials mining for all its components, the manufacture of all those components, the transportation (and packaging) of all those components (separately, each) to the assembly factory, the assembly, the transportation (and packaging) of the device to the warehouse, and then transporting it from the warehouse to the store or delivered (in more packaging) to your house?
There are people who keep a fan running, or the hood in their kitchen. That of course works. But the amount of energy required is probably 100x that of a radio. And the latter has the added benefit that you can adjust the type of noise, as well as the volume.
I usually budget $1/year for each watt used 24/7. So using 2 watts instead of 12 watts will save $10/year, or more likely ~$3/year when only used during sleep periods.
Advertising. Many billions are spent manipulating us into believing the perfectly usable things we have are inadequate and only the new and shiny version of it will make us feel whole and/or will attract attention from the opposite sex. Advertising works, hence why many of us SWEs have cushy high paid jobs at tech companies that sell ads.
Anecdotal to a certain degree: In our part of Cologne, Germany, you place things you want to share/get rid of outside your doorstep (even in duplexes and larger houses with lots of flats). People come by and take (mostly what needed), nearly zero vandalism. I found a lot of good things others did not need this way: A Coffeemachine, furniture for our living room, two printers and lots of mugs. I guess it works where it works ... and official people have the mentality to tolerate some unrestricted sharing. Also, the city has a web-app to send them a notice of "trash piles" - with tracking if and when the pile has been taken care of. Last, the city run recycling facilities are "free", you just have to drive your stuff to the place or you have a yearly number of times to get it taken from the streets (large objects like couches) for free, too.
> The cost to our world from this behaviour is immense and it is quite frankly indefensible at this point.
This is just neurotic. On what margin is throwing away a microwave destroying the planet? It's not going into the ocean. We're not running out of steel. You have to prioritize things that matter here.
Recycling options for appliances are pretty poor everywhere you go. I live in a major city, and there's exactly 1 store for recycling electronics. It's 25-minute drive. I don't know why we don't have the infrastructure, but we don't, and that's what you'll have to solve.
Most 20-somethings these days would gladly recycle things if there was an easy way. Telling people to use their annoying/cheap/half-broken appliances forever for vague environmental guilt reasons is just not going to work, I'm sorry.
What does being 20-29 years old have to do with the convenience of recycling locations? The article didn't state or imply that this was a problem only for 20-somethings.
Finding something useful to do with something that almost works is such a drain. I don't have the bandwidth to fix everything that broke in my life. And it seems very hard to funnel these items to the people who do. There are probably not enough such people.
That sounds like something which could be solved by service of the type often built by those who frequent this site. Instead of tossing that piece of equipment with a small problem it could be either brought to or collected by one of those fixer-types (of whom I'm one) who can fix the object to give it a new life, either by handing it over to a thrift store or a local charity or by thrift-store-selling it themselves. Even that could be arranged through a service of the aforementioned type.
Such a service does not lend itself to "monetisation" so it probably takes a more ideologically driven type of developer than usually found in the startup scene. Still, some of those hang around here as well, me being one of them. To make it work there should be some clear guidelines as to what is considered to be worth repairing to avoid turning the service into an literal garbage dump. It would also be good to keep ideology as much out of the public-facing image as possible to avoid it being pigeonholed into the Gretasphere [1] and as such being shunned by many who would otherwise be interested.
There are already Craigslists and Freecycles and Gumtree (eBay lite) and Facebook groups and so on.
> "there should be some clear guidelines as to what is considered to be worth repairing"
Would you sketch some out? I think expecting the proverbial grandma with an old electronic device to read and understand and care about them before posting is going to be a dealbreaker.
I have an office chair (not fancy, I got it for free to begin with) that got its upholstery roughed up in a move. If I sit on it, I'll get vinyl flakes all over me, which will get around the apartment, so I don't want it. I tried Craigslist. Do you think such an item would find a home on the other services you listed?
If there were a "fixer" subscribed to the service who is into replacing upholstery and assuming that the chair is otherwise in good condition, why not? If it is a rickety thing falling apart at the seams with broken wheels and a dysfunctional gas lift, certainly not. If somewhere in between, probably not.
It seems jodrellblank was suggesting that your idea effictively already exists among those four services. It didn't work for me on craigslist (though I did get rid of a metal table in need of repair), and I was wondering if one of the others would be any better. If not, maybe your specialized idea makes sense.
I wasn't suggesting the idea already exists, I was suggesting that "clear guidelines as to what is considered to be worth repairing" in the general case is impossible and if that's a big differentiator for this new service, it won't be enough. Supporting evidence is that the_third_wave can't tell you whether your chair is worth repairing or not, they can only make a general comment that if it's got small damage worth repairing then someone might want to repair it and if it's too damaged they won't. Which is tautologically true but not helpful enough to build a broken-chair-trading site on.
That is, if you put your chair on a hugely popular free-for-all site Craiglist and nobody wants it, why would you the seller want to jump through hoops to list it on a less known less established site? Anyone who wants to buy stuff to repair has heard of Craigslist and eBay and so on already, right?
> Anyone who wants to buy stuff to repair has heard of Craigslist and eBay and so on already, right?
Maybe, but what about the people who want to buy repaired equipment? The service I describe can function as an intermediary between those who have broken equipment to get rid off, those who can repair such equipment and those who want to get functioning equipment. Thrift stores do not take broken equipment if they can, individual "fixers" do not have the name recognition to be able to sell repaired equipment, buyers who are not fixers want to get equipment which is known to work.
Why not monetization? I had a coworker who refurbished old phones and sold them on ebay. If you can make a little money on the repair and resale, maybe the connecting service could take a tiny cut.
Not "monetisation" as in building a startup with the intent of cashing out at the end of the ride, this does not mean the whole thing needs to be non-profit. It is fine - nay, essential - to run at cost plus a bit for rainy days if the thing is to last longer than a few months. It is not the sort of thing which would be of interest for investors to buy themselves a share of.
But maybe a simple purpose-built message board would go a long way. You don't just browse craigslist looking for people who post half-broken stuff right?
Our whole system revolves around people buying shit they don't need/want to keep up with the ridiculous pace at which we produce shit we don't need/want.
I think 3/4th of my kitchen is composed of stuff people threw away, and everything is 100% working.
The depressing thing is that the extreme vast majority of people have completely accepted it as the only possibility, as if no other way of life ever existed and will ever exist
> The ideology of consumerism acts like a fault in its manufacture, it sabotages the commodity coated in it; it turns what could be the material equipment of happiness into a new form of slavery.
> Premature burial is an axiom of consumerism, imperfection a precondition of planned obsolescence
This is pretty much exactly it and I agree with you 100%. Most of the stuff I own works exactly as it should, but was someone else's junk.
I didn't want to call out consumerism too directly or by name, because people tend to take it badly. Even a lot of the comments here are quite defensive and I didn't even get into what I truly think about the situation.
There's no way this system is sustainable long term.
Somebody should start a business collecting clothes made of wool that are worn out or have holes in it. Send people a prepaid shipping box. They put in their stuff. You clean and mend it at scale. And sell it. Yes, it’s work. But how many holes can a skilled person mend per hour? I think you could earn a programmer’s wage with that kind of labor, or maybe even better.
Here in the Netherlands many neighbourhoods have containers for textiles. You can put in any clothes or things like bed linen as long as it is dry and clean and not completely worn. These are picked up, cleaned and mended where necessary, and then, dependent on the area, sold or given away for free to whom need it. It does not pay well and is volunteer work.
Edit: there is even a charity that comes and pick up stuff. They are really picky though. A whole perfect couch with just a small stain won’t be accepted because they can’t sell it as is. And they don’t want to risk being stuck with it or unable to clean.
These exist in Germany as well. But I also think they just cherry pick. Plus, you would probably get shamed publicly if you threw in clothes that have a hole in it, no matter the material. They’d take that not as a sign that you care about giving broken things a second life, but rather as an insult.
Alternate take, its all just a product of energy and materials extraction being super cheap so money basically becomes a representative of human attention/effort. its very hard to change as the behavior is permeated everywhere. IMO a better approach would be to provide guardrails against poor disposal for non-easily biodegradable stuff like plastics. especially the once we let go in ocean.
the big eye-opener for me was when I learned that plastics can take as much as 5000 years to fully decompose. that means the single use bag I use to pickup my food from restaurant will last as much as the entire human civilization in nature for my 10 minute convinience.
You’d be amazed at what we (as in people) can convince ourselves is OK.
Everybody’s guilty of something — especially the people most likely to be reading HN. Eating meat, living in big houses, ordering stuff from around the world, having a bunch of kids, driving a car everywhere, flying in a plane on vacation.
We’re all guilty and we all want to think we’re not.
“But I recycle…”
“But I have to drive…”
“But corporations are worse…”
“But eating meat is natural…”
“But a house with a yard is a better environment for kids to grow up in…”
Some or all of these might be true. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re responsible for your actions, whether you can justify them to yourself or not.
> We’re all guilty and we all want to think we’re not.
I’ve completely accepted my guilt. I don’t try to convince myself that these things are the right way to live life. I just accept that the only way for me to make a difference is to be part of, or very closely adjacent to, the “ruling class” (politicians, corporate leadership) where I would be able to start taxing externalities and allocate those taxes to remediation.
I know my eating meat is wrong and bad for the world. I just don’t believe that individually becoming virtuous will change anything about the world.
I mean, we are running out of fresh water for crops and meat uses a lot more than plants. This doesn’t change if you grow it industrially or pastorally.
> Pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy were all pretty similar, but beef was a different story. Compared to the average of the other four, beef required 28 times the area of land per calorie, 11 times the water for irrigation, six times the nitrogen fertilizer, and it resulted in five times the greenhouse gas emissions For reference, they calculated similar impacts for potatoes, wheat, and rice. Compared to the average of those, beef’s footprint ballooned to 160 times the land, eight times the water, 19 times the nitrogen fertilizer, and 11 times the greenhouse gas emissions. Per gram of protein, the story is largely the same except that potatoes, wheat, and rice have less of an advantage due to their lower protein content.
The math listed in the article doesn't completely check out, e.g. they imply that [pork, chicken, eggs, dairy] require 160x (beef:plants) / 28x (beef:chicken) = 5.3x times (chicken:plants) as much land as [potatoes, wheat, rice], which makes sense, but also imply that [pork, chicken, eggs, dairy] 8x (beef:plants) / 11x (beef:chicken) = 0.72x times (chicken:plants) as much water as [potatoes, wheat, rice].
It's not thermodynamically possible for chickens to use less water per calorie than their feedstock. I never opened the actual study[1] though, I'm assuming they have reasonable results inside the study.
I also think that analysis vs. protein is more relevant than vs. calories -- which is why I think they should be compared against high-protein plants like beans and legumes.
I would encourage you to google “ogallala depletion” and “water shortage in India”. Not enough rain falls for us to maintain our current level of agriculture so we “mine” reserves of water that were stored in the ground over thousands of years. This is called “groundwater” (you may be unaware of this term), and it renews at a rate far too slow to support the level of agriculture we are accustomed to.
Soya from all over Africa. Green beans from Kenya, literally in my local Asda right now. Baby corn, peppers, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes - all of that shipped from Africa.
South America grows a lot of soya too, in unbelievably bad ecological conditions.
Ummmm eating meat IS natural and it’s been a part of human diets from before the start of recorded history. It’s such an enjoyable and important experience to me that I would literally rather impose limits on the number of humans allowed to be born than the amount of meat those humans are allowed to consume.
You can consume all the meat you want. I’m not talking about imposing limits.
I’m talking about everyone acknowledging making choices that they know are awful for the planet today because it’s something they personally like doing or feel like they must do.
We all do it. Nobody’s innocent here. It’s a key reason why the looming climate crisis is completely unavoidable.
Most people don’t drive 200 miles a day carrying 1000 pounds of tools and equipment. So don’t pretend like that’s normal. And if that does apply to you, then you should be encouraging everyone to drive less - it means less traffic for you.
As for the meat, it’s pretty clear that eating less meat (and reducing demand for meat), is a net environmental gain, regardless of how far you ship the beans. You can also eat less meat, although I’m pretty sure there’s a reason you can’t do that either.
Or you’re right about all this and there is no alternative.
Most of the world isn't rolling Iowa cornfield, and mixed agriculture is how we get food. You can't just decide "oh, no need to raise cattle on that, I'm going to start growing acai berries and soy beans" because real life isn't Farmville.
Almost everything I have, aside from gifts I receive from people who overlook my preference, is second-hand.
It is called freeganism, and it helps me feel less complicit in the shaving down of our own biome into things which are thrown away.
In a country with massive abundance, there is more than enough secondhand stuff to go around.
I wish it to become less acceptable (or more workaroundable) for devices like Apple's to become locked forever just because their owner has locked them.
I also have a "hobby" of looking for homes and owners for things which I find. I have found it to be rewarding.
The problem is that most people do not log out of their device when they discard it. And as long as the device is linked to its iCloud device, it is forever locked and cannot ever be used again.
I picked a nice 1930s sideboard/bed side table and a working lamp out of a skip just yesterday. I've taken things from the tip that just work. Including a KitchenAid mixer.
I really don't get why people don't just take this stuff to the charity shop.
Skips go for ~£300 and the one yesterday was full of mostly fine stuff. Someone paid good money to get rid of good stuff. I don't get it.
They took the trouble to put a sign on it. Yes perhaps they should have taken it to a thrift store but it seems they're trying or hoping to have it reused rather than trashed.
Some ideas to explore here: improvement, marginal improvement, scarcity, marginal scarcity, externalities
We buy new shit because it's better than the old shit in some way.
If the thing we want to buy is scarce it will cost a lot. At some point, something in the thing may become scarce, but it is not now.
Externalities - the cost to put something in household garbage is mostly dependent on volume, not on the value of the item, or if it is recyclable or reusable.
I don’t know. Maybe that microwave smells really really bad and it’s not coming out. I don’t care how new the damn thing is or how well it works, it’s going in the trash.
I often fix things that are fixable, but sometimes I just outgrow the feature set or it becomes too difficult to fix, lacking parts or me lacking tools or time.
Because for capitalism everything must be profited of, everything is disposable, short term gain is better than long term planning, and the earth has infinite resources, there to make the usual 10 people even richer at your expense.
Buy my current neighborhood does a good job. People leave furniture and other items on the sidewalk regularly and other people take them (oftentimes seemingly instantly!). Half of my furniture is from the street, some of it very nice. And there are Facebook groups where people post stuff that's on the street, or things in their home they want to give away (though then you are back to making plans with weirdos).
The main group I use is Buy Nothing... https://www.facebook.com/BuyNothingProject/
I find a lot of their policies/moderation to be excessive, but it works.