New Worth On Old Goods: Living In A Recession
Bottled water, paper plates, computer keyboards, disposable contacts, monitors, vacuum cleaners, VCR’s and millions of other goods 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 meant for. Disposables have become a problem but are now part of the social norm. Other things, 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 common place 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.
We live in a world that plows through products at an alarming rate. The volume of waste generated simply by whim is astonishing. Beautiful carpets are ripped up and thrown out because someone wants a different style. 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 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 being thrown out. Many products 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 culture.
Temporary value is a way of thinking about the world we live in. If everything is easily replaced, 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 process 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 effects well beyond the obvious environmental issues of waste and consumption of resources. There is also a psychological dulling. People mentality has become accustomed to disposable lives. This society has adopted a habit of discarding in place of working with or valuing people, places and things. Allegiance within the work place has dramatically changed in the last fifty years. Product loyalty has nearly disappeared. Working with the challenges of most personal encounters has increasingly diminished 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.
