I Don't Understand Why We Throw Away Perfectly Working Things

06-NOV-2022

A newer microwave sits in a pile of garbage waiting for collection day.

There are many things that confuse and confound me about the society we find ourselves in, but none so much as how we deal with the objects that make up our lives.

It's one thing to throw away something, old, something broken, or something that simply isn't economical to fix, but increasingly I see people throwing out perfectly working items that still have years of life left.

How do we consider this okay? In a society trying to deal with our impact on the world we prefer sexy, shiny, far off solutions while ignoring the things right in front of us. Throwing out something working means more consumption, more used resources, and more shipping among other things. Good for the economy, but awful for the world we live in.

In the photo at the top of this page a microwave sits abandoned in a pile of trash with a sign on it that says it works. This is a stainless steal microwave, quite modern in all respects, and it doesn't belong in the garbage. It should be in someone's home being used, or at the Sally Anne waiting for a new home.

Instead of that though this microwave was manufactured less than a year ago only to find itself sitting in the dirt waiting for its day at the dump. All the effort and emissions it took to both make it and ship it from China to Nova Scotia were expended for almost nothing.

I remember as a child well meaning adults trying to ingrain the concept of "reduce, reuse, recycle" into our brains and while I took that to heart, our society constantly craves the shiny, new, bigger, cooler thing making us quickly forget these ideals as we grow up.

How are we okay with this and more importantly why do we throw away perfectly working things? The cost to our world from this behaviour is immense and it is quite frankly indefensible at this point.

Buy the very best you can afford, buy for life, and consider whether you really need the marginally improved version of something.

Русские, ты лёд под ногами майора!