I don't understand why we throw away perfectly working things
muezza.ca
muezza.ca
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.
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.
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.
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.
These centers are a wonderful source of super-affordable second-hand stuff. The environmental benefits are yuuuge.
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?
At all the Goodwill's I've donated at, I'm always the only one there at that time. Just drive up and unload immediately
[1] The local “Dump” or “Tip” - [2] “Goodwill”.
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.
stupid dolts, not realizing who the real hero of the story is!
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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.
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.
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.)
But really, you should take your condescension elsewhere. HN isn't the appropriate place for it.
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.
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.
I just tell them all, I am putting it out by the curb. First person to come gets it.
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.
Never had anyone ask for more pictures at all
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.
- 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.
<https://www.wrps.on.ca/en/staying-safe/buy-and-sell-exchange...>
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.
It’s quick.
All that is to say, it wasn’t pain in the ass when I was in the Netherlands.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So instead they built Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11?
Windows 11 though seems entirely arbitrary, especially since TPM requirements appear inconsistent and capricious.
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?
Also out of the box support for TRIM and a few other goodies.
XP --> Vista/7 was the biggest jump in terms of functionality, since it also happened to coincide with massive performance gains in hardware.
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
I was not talking about financial cost, but the overall cost to the biome, along with work expended and materials used.
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.
This example isn't even a problem of recycling, it's buying something you don't need.
How much energy went into that microwave that is now waiting with the rubbish. How many does it take before it's meaningful?
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.
[1] of the Thunberg type, not the children's book
> "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.
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?
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.
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
Raoul Vaneigem
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's not if you're buying locally-sourced meat.
It's better than growing stuff in Africa and shipping it across in refrigerated containers using as much fuel every day as about 20,000 cars would.
South America grows a lot of soya too, in unbelievably bad ecological conditions.
> 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.
0: https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/07/among-meats-beef-has...
You may also google “western USA water shortage”.
What's the alternative to eating meat? Eating beans shipped from halfway round the world?
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.
Just a hunch.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eating-less-red-m...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/climate/what-if-we-all-at...
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/eating-less-meat-essential-to-cu...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/cutting-red-m...
You know there are vegetables other than corn and they can be grown in quite a few places outside of Iowa right?
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.
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.
Yes, as an anti-theft measure, the seller has to explicitly log out of the device before transferring it. Erasing the device prompts you to do this.
Apple has many, many faults, but I don't see this as one of them.
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.
Anyway I picked it up, tested it out, and donated it, so maybe it'll be useful to someone yet.
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.