New Worth On Old Goods: Living In A Recession
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 made for tossing. That is what disposables are designed to be. Disposables have become a problem but are now part of the social norm. Other items, 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 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 amount of waste generated simply by whim is astonishing. Beautiful carpets are ripped up and thrown out because someone wants a different color or Berber is in fashion. People turn in their cars for a newer model and clean out their closets of perfectly fine 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 relating to the world around us. If everything is disposable, then the worth 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 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 weighed with dollars and cents.
Existing in a society of disposable resources has effects well beyond the obvious environmental issues of waste and consumption of resources. It has an emotional toll as well. People mentality has become accustomed to disposable lives. Our culture has developed a system of leaving behind anything that isn’t working right. Loyalty to employees and employers has significantly altered in the last fifty years. Product loyalty is practically non-existent. 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 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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