Cleaning house--or office

So, we're moving offices at work. The entire top floor of the building is being redone, so my entire department is moving down a floor. A floor already occupied. Which means lots and lots of throwing things away and making space for things.

We already called a company to haul away our old, broken computers. I wish I could donate them to someone who could rehabilitate them, but alas, they are far too far gone. Now I am redesigning the basement to fit the other department here on the top floor, and that involves cleaning up the basement and reorganizing and generally tearing it apart to put it back together in a better way.

We're doing the same at home, where we're making more room for more furniture which is desperately needed for one more person. This, too, involves dumping things and donating things and cleaning and organizing.

I've so far filled six boxes with paper for recycling, and that's just in my office at work. I have no idea how much more I'll unearth as I clean out the rest of the department. At home, where we downsized radically before moving to our current home, there was less to get rid of, but there always is something.

I'd love to have a life where, once a day, I got rid of something. Not throwing garbage away, no, but one thing--a toy, a book, a small appliance I don't really use... I wonder how long it would take to get to the point where I had only what I needed.

I'm thinking, sadly, that that would be a very long time. But I guess that's what it takes to tear something apart to put it back together in a better way, huh?

The Culture of Planned Obsolescence

I really want a new computer.

I have it all picked out--a Mac laptop, which I will kit out with all the bells and whistles. It will be fantastic and I will probably name it Han Solo or something. There's only one problem.

I already have a computer.

It's a nice computer. It's about three or four years old--a PC, but we can't always have what we want--and blue. And it still works quite nicely. And every time I think, "I could give it away, though! Someone will want it--it works just fine!" I also think, "If it works just fine, why get rid of it at all?"

Which is, of course, the question. Yes, for the most part, computers are not designed to last very long. There's actually a logic that is applied to this by the computer makers: computer technology is growing at such a blinding rate that it doesn't make sense to build things that last ten years, because in ten years, that computer will be so outdated that the owner will have no use for it anyway.

Except that back in the day, I had an Apple IIe, and it lasted and lasted. Even after we got the enormity of GUI that was the Macintosh, I still used it and added on to it and used it some more. It was still functional the last time I tried it (which, granted, was about ten years ago).

Yes, my three to four year old computer is not as fast as the ones out now. Yes, there are definitely programs it won't run because it lacks the processor speed. But couldn't I just see if I could update the processor? Shouldn't I at least do that?

Or do I even need to? The great fallacy of marketing electronics these days is the assumption that we actually need all that they're selling us.

Take a 65" HDTV, for example. If you are putting such a television in a room where the couch will be less than seven feet away (an approximate optimum viewing distance), you're wasting money and likely buying a television that will hurt your eyes with every redraw.

Or a computer like mine. I do a small bit of video work--nothing earth-shattering or complex. I design, using Photoshop and InDesign; and obviously, I surf the internet and blog. I can do all of that with the machine I currently have. Will I be able to play Sims 3 on it? Possibly not. But that's not really a reason to dispose of the one I have for one I'll just--maybe--use more.

This planned obsolescence also extends to clothing. I remember wearing my brother's sweaters sometimes when I was a kid. He was four-and-a-half years older than me and my sister had worn these sweaters in between. They lasted an awfully long time. I also remember being able to wear a pair of socks that lasted at least a year before a child's natural energy and foot use wore them out.

Now it's rare for me to have a set of trouser socks that lasts more than a month before my toes are sticking out. I still wear the holey ones sometimes--but that's only because I'm really, really cheap when it comes to buying clothing. Seriously, I have t-shirts and sweaters that are more than a decade old and are still worn pretty frequently.

Why I don't just darn the damn socks and get the annoyance factor over with, I don't know. It's like a rip in a hem on your slacks--just sew the stupid thing back on, because it only takes a few minutes and then you haven't wasted $50 on a ruined pair of slacks.

But while slacks are expensive, socks are cheap. Really cheap. You can get a pair of trouser socks for $5. So why bother darning them when it's cheap and easy to get a new pair? Not to mention that you look and sound like a total freak for even suggesting that people get out their sewing kits (and how many of you really even have one?) and darn their socks. What, are you stuck in the depression?

So, rather than bother to spend the time darning, I buy a new pair of socks. And another. And another. And what happens to the old ones? Well you can't give them away to Goodwill, can you? I mean, they're torn!

And thus, planned obsolescence grinds on.

Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe I keep my computer until it doesn't work at all, and I darn those socks no matter how silly it makes me sound or look. And then I've saved all the money I would have spent on both computer and socks and that's suddenly looking like not such a bad idea in this economy.

And maybe next time I buy socks, I think about finding a better brand of sock in the first place, because darning these things every month is kind of a pain in the butt.

Recycling made very difficult

Note: I started this blog entry yesterday at lunch time. Why was I blogging at work? Because I currently have no phone or internet at home. While this is very disconcerting to a person who spends most of the time online, it's actually been rather liberating. I haven't even turned on the powerstrip that powers my computer since Wednesday afternoon. Kinda nice, really. But I missed yesterday and I'm sorry about that. If I have time, I may blog up a couple of articles for over the weekend before I leave here today. If not, you'll know why the silence.

So, six or seven years ago, I started hearing about "E-waste." It was this great catch phrase that encompassed everything from the computer that became obsolete ten minutes after you bought it to the Atari that finally gave up the ghost after almost 20 years.

The thing is, those electronics are dangerous. We've been throwing out cathode ray televisions and satellite phones for half a century--who knew?

Well, apparently, we all should have. And in honor of the fact that my internet and phone are both out at home and I'm seriously questioning why exactly I need those things at all, I figured today was the day to talk e-waste, and how very annoying it can be to properly dispose of.

Say you're burning a back up of your personal information off onto DVD. You've been doing this every six months, just like the pundits say, but the problem is, once you've got this backup, the backup from six months ago isn't relevant any more.

Then there's that amazing Flock of Seagulls CD that you've had since there were CDs. Unfortunately, your three-year-old doesn't have the best taste in music and your dog--to whom he fed the CD--does. Plastic shards don't really play that well in today's new-fangled boomboxes.

There's the remote control that doesn't really control anything anymore; the personal digital assistant that doesn't assist; the television that almost but doesn't quite show you a readable picture. Now, most of us know somewhere where we can recycle cans and bottles, but do we know where to dump all the rest of this stuff?

The answer is not in the garbage, but in a complex dance to send it all away to be disposed of responsibly. Unfortunately, this can be a pain.

If you don't live in a big city (or a progressive town), chances are your local municipality isn't going to help you out here. Sure, L.A. county has its weekly recycling drop-offs, Chicago has household chemical and electronic recycling locations, and New York City has NYC WasteLe$$, but if you live in the middle of Iowa or South Dakota, you're likely to have a problem.

Luckily, for a fee, of course, you can have somebody take care of it. When we were planning to move inland from the East Coast, we found we had an enormous amount of e-waste. We'd never gotten rid of it because we were just too lazy to figure out how to do it, but I was damned if we were going to pay somebody to haul my nonfunctional ten year old Zaurus and the three dead laptops and every other dead plastic thing we had halfway across the country to our new home, where it would still sit in uselessness.

Thus did I find GreenDisk. GreenDisk is a company out of St. Louis that has made an art of making sure you don't throw your electronics away. If you have CRT monitors and tower computers and such, you will need to contact them to find out how much it will cost to get them to take your stuff, but if all you have are remote controls and videotapes and CDs and PDAs and even laptops, you can get them to send you one of their TechnoTrash cans. The small one holds 35 pounds of stuff and the large one holds 70, and you basically pack everything in there and send it back to them via FedEx. The price of the shipping is included in the price of the trash can.

And yes, it is a little expensive, but I've found that I actually find it very freeing to fill a can full of junk and know that that junk isn't ending up in a landfill. If I have to pay for the privilege, so be it.

Another thing I did was to get my boss to sign on to buy TechnoTrash cans for the office here. It's great! The can is in the office kitchen, next to the other recycling bins, and people can just dump their old CDs and such in there. Once it's full, it's my job to pack it up and send it back to GreenDisk.

Unfortunately, GreenDisk doesn't take batteries--I mean, they will if it's the battery that came with the computer or whatnot, but not, like a whole box full of AAA standards. Batteries are really quite dangerous if left in landfills to degrade. They poison groundwater and scavenging animals and... yeah. They're bad.

Luckily, while researching for this article, I found a place like GreenDisk, but one that will take those batteries off your hands! Battery Solutions offers a residential solution called iRecycle (someday I'm going to write a blog entry about the disturbing trend of putting "i" in front of everything). iRecycle is a box that Battery Solutions sends you. Fill it up with AAAs, AAs, cellphone batteries, cellphones themselves... There's a nice list on their site. Then just slap the label they gave you on the box, call FedEx or drop the box off at a FedEx location, and you're golden. Or green.

Now, some people may be thinking about the environmental sustainability of having this stuff shipped all across the country. I actually asked the guys at GreenDisk about that once, and the company has done research into how many miles their e-waste travels. Yes, sometimes it's a considerable number, but the thing I found out was that they use FedEx and not the US Mail because FedEx actually sets up their deliveries to use the smallest number of travel miles per package. So, maybe not as green as not buying and disposing of electronic stuff at all, but greener than the mail. And definitely greener than throwing it all in the garbage.

I'd urge everyone to Google around their local area and find out where you can dispose of things. Many groceries, like Whole Foods and even some Safeways and Krogers, will take a lot of recycling, and a few might have battery boxes or at least battery drop-off days. Some science museums and nature museums have now started programs for recycling toxics, simply as another service and educational opportunity.

Look around you. Local is always better if you know it's getting disposed of properly. If your local municipality doesn't recycle, ask them why not? If they have curbside recycling projects for home disposal, make sure they're actually doing what they say they are. Chicago's BlueBag program served as a major embarrassment to the city before being shut down.

It's a pain, yes. I know--I have a drawer full of batteries and a box full of old videotapes that are somehow, someday, actually going to make it into a recycling stream when I find the time--but it's not as much of a pain as garbage taking over the planet. I'm exaggerating, of course, but seriously, a lot of this stuff can be recycled, and by using these recycling companies, you're putting money into the green side of the economy. The more money we have in the green economy, the more people will want to invest there, and the stronger and cheaper and more prevalent it will become.

See what I'm saying?

Now I have to go pack up the latest box for GreenDisk. And maybe get off my butt and go to the local battery recycling drop off this weekend. A greenie's work is never done...