Tossing Out Disposable Habits: Making Repairs In A Recession
Bottled water, 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. Disposables have become a problem but are established as a part of life. Other items, such as major electronics, is tossed out 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 discover 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 chucks old goods at an alarming rate. The volume 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 perfectly fine clothes to make room for the latest fashions. Beyond the incredible piles 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. Perfectly functioning 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 concept of temporary value is deeply embedded in our society.
Temporary value is a way of relating to 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 tossed out since a replacement is either going to cost about the same as repair, or the redtape of getting the repair done through warranty requires boxing and shipping and waiting for three to six weeks. Worth is usually given according to expensesor time and effort balanced against dollars and cents.
Existing in a society of disposable resources has reveals much larger issues than the obvious environmental complaints. It has an emotional toll as well. People have become use to disposable careers, disposable workers, disposable relationships and disposable families. This society has adopted a habit of discarding in place of working with or valuing people, places and things. Loyalty to employees and employers has significantly altered in the last fifty years. Product loyalty has nearly disappeared. Effort to solve or fix problems in relationships seems to have suffered as well judging by the amount of litigation in the family and civil courts.
The the advantage of the recent plunge in the economy is that many people are giving broken or well worn items another look. The tinier wallet is causing many to review the way worth is viewed at work, in the marketplace and at home.
