throwaway - Part 3

... being part three of an ongoing series on wastefulness and frugality: see parts One and Two for previous posts ...

... ... ... so what set me off on this warpath against wastefulness??




This > > >



(sorry, took this pic on the sly in the local White Hen / 7-11)


This, to me, is the ultimate in waste. This is an affront to all of my senses.

What is "this", you ask??

... no-return rental DVDs ...

... and what makes them no-returns? They become unplayable after 48hrs ... and are then to. just. be. thrown. away.

Yes - the ultimate in this throwaway society - watch and throw!!


The culprit? Flexplay.com (I am so NOT linking to them!)


Their business model is certainly ingenious, adding yet another spin to the innovation brought about by Netflix. This time it's not just "no late fees", "arrives in your mailbox" and "no need to return to the store" ... it's "no MONTHLY fees", "get one by mail, or in a kiosk, or at a convenience store near you" and best of all "no need to get off your fat lazy ass to drop DVD off in the mail or at the store, just harm Mother Nature one DVD at a time by throwing it away when you're done". Oh wait, that's a plus????


geeeezzzzzz!!!!



okay okay okay so they have a page on "recycling" and (this is the silver lining) I discover that DVDs now are recyclable... yay!

However.

Flexplay claims "Most local recycling programs accept the polycarbonate plastics used to manufacture DVDs" - ummmm yeeaaahhhh.... first and foremost, polycarbonate falls into category #7 ("other"), which has traditionally not been recycled. Also, I looked and looked and looked and didn't find anything within the City of Chicago sites that specified DVDs were accepted; they do take #7s but a DVD isn't a "plastic bottle or container" is it?

Oh hey, you know the recent health concerns surrounding Bisphenol A (BPA)? Bisphenol A has been known to leach from the plastic lining of canned foods and, to a lesser degree, polycarbonate plastics that are cleaned with harsh detergents or used to contain acidic or high-temperature liquids (baby bottles!!). There's that pesky #7 again.

Now, in the million years (I kid you not!) it takes for a CD (and I assume similarly for DVDs ) to completely decompose in a landfill, will a byproduct of this decomposition be BPA? Yikes!! Because it's not unheard of for landfills to contaminate groundwater and/or aquifers by leakage, eh?


*sigh*


Let's get back to flexplay for a minute...

I concede one small point to them: there is this option online where users can request a postage pre-paid electronic label to recycle expired Flexplay discs. but... helloo?? ... this is for your target market of people who don't want to bother mailing back "actual" DVDs?! What makes you think they would then bother with getting a mailing label let alone actually mailing the darned thing to a recycling facility??!! Do you think your target market CARES about the environment if they are agreeable to purchasing unusable-in-48hrs DVDs?? I think not.

And the clincher?? "And of course, a Flexplay No-Return DVD Rental completely eliminates the energy usage and emissions associated with a return trip to the video rental store."* WHOOO-PUH-DEEEE-DOOOO!!! Again: WHAT ABOUT THE ACTUAL DVDs AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT???

Bottom line? Flexplay = FAIL!!

A parting note: Like I typed earlier, the silver lining to Flexplay is the discovery/confirmation that DVDs are, in fact, recyclable, even though not here in Chicagoland. There are other options to consider (see here, here, here and here). As such - if you're one of those who occasionally gets "bad discs" when ripping/burning whatnot, or if you've got unplayable discs for some reason, please don't just throw them in the trash!! Accumulate them until they are worth sending to any of those sites, please? Sure, you may have to pay postage, but what's $5 against the long-term impact of those discs that would otherwise do nothing but harm?

More importantly, it's vital that we realise that recycling, while important, is a small fix for a very very very flawed system. See The Story of Stuff for what I mean.

On behalf of Mother Earth, and our future generations, I thank you for taking the time to REDUCE the waste you generate, REUSE whatever you do have, and in addition to that, RECYCLE as much as possible to close the loop.

:)
[*lynne* hops off soapbox]

* taken from Flexplay's "recycling" page; again, I am so NOT linking to them!!

throwaway - Part 2

Continuing my train of thought on wastefulness... (Part One here)

PART TWO: D.U.S.T.

Yes, you read that right. Dust.

Back when I was young, every Saturday was cleaning day. With a parental unit as taskmaster, we'd use the feather duster to send dust off of the shelves into the air to fall back onto the shelves and perhaps onto the floor, which we then swept with crappy brooms that let as much dust escape as it actually swept, into a pile that was then brushed into the hand-held pan, again liberating clouds of dust back into the air, then dumped into the rubbish bag, again with the dust liberation. Cough cough! The only real way to "tame" it all was by mopping the floors. What a battle, one that was fought and lost every single weekend for *how* many years of my life??

A "cure" to all that - a dustmop! You wield it like a mop, but it's for dust! No more dust flying around! w00t!

I'd owned one for a brief period of time in Malaysia, and found it excellent: the only drawback was that of course you'd need to clean off the mop head every so often by taking off the shaggy cloth and tossing it in the washing machine. My parents inherited it when I moved back in with them, but my parent(s) didn't seem keen on it, so it stayed hidden behind a door for a few years, then disappeared when the moved to their new place. Oh well...

Moving on... Back in 2006, when Kosh and I moved in to an apartment with hardwood floors rather than carpet, whoohooo, time for a dustmop to tackle all them dust bunnies, cat hair, and my own shedding hair!!

Unfortunately I didn't give it enough thought while shopping: swayed by advertising, not wanting to deal with cleaning the mop head like before, but not thinking about the implication of buying two types of DISPOSABLE cloths, I grabbed me a Swiffer Starter Kit and a box each of dry & wet cloths.

Can you imagine my dismay when I realised just how wasteful it actually is?

There's this piece of textured cloth you fix to the flat "mop" and then do your thing, and "... when you're done cleaning, throw the cloth and all that dirt away!" Ummmm after just the one use? No frikkin' way! Seriously! No way would I be party to such wastage!!

So I used same cloth a few times rather than disposing of it after one round of Swiffering the apartment, using the dustbuster to then suck the dust off of the cloth in order to be able to continue using it.

Of course, the effectiveness of the cloth plummets after one use... so once it gets real bad, I turn the cloth over and use the other side! Not as effective as a pristine cloth, but still provides a relatively decent performance.

As a result, a box of 16 dry cloths has lasted us two years, and it's still not finished! How's that for being frugal? :) It helps that Kosh and I are, ummm, not *slobs* per se, but we're certainly not hung up about needing the place spick and span and dust-free at all times :)

On a less positive note, we had also bought a 12-count box of WET cloths for the same Swiffer mop, so that we could, you know, actually MOP the floors: now that was an utter waste! The cloth seems to run out of moisture after only a small surface area gets "mopped" ... I'm tempted to see if I can "reactivate" it by spraying water on the target floor, but I don't care enough to try; instead I just make sure I limit the wet mopping to smaller areas (just bathroom, or just kitchen, or just entryway, etc etc).

We ended up having to buy an actual mop (easy-squeeze sponge type) so that the entire apartment could get a proper moppage without going through like three of those swiffer wet cloths. So much for a 2-in-1 product!

.. .. now the question becomes: once the wet and dry cloths run out ... am I going to replace them? If nothing else, I would get another round of the dry ones, certainly not the wet ones. And if I decide to forgo the Swiffer entirely, umm, we'd have that thing sitting in a corner gathering dust on its own. Sigh. So, might as well use it, right?

... ... if I could go back to that fateful day when Kosh and I were doing our new household shopping, I'm wondering what I would decide, knowing what I know now... perhaps I would have voted to just make do with the crummy vacuum cleaner instead of a dustmop/broom to deal with the dust? (ugh noise! ugh emptying the dust bag/container!). Because the bottom line for me no brooms - i know all too well how they don't work!!

One positive thing out of the debacle? We're sticking to using Pledge (or equivalent) and a small dustcloth which we throw in with the laundry, to take dust off of stuff, rather than falling for the Swiffer Duster product!

We take the small victories where we can... :D

... the REAL reason for this series on wastage coming up next ... stay tuned!

throwaway - Part 1

Being half Swiss and having been exposed since very young to the frugalism that defines most of Europe (that, amusingly, here in the U.S. seems to be the stereotype for Jews!), wastefulness does grate on me.

Here in the U.S., I feel it even more keenly than elsewhere.

I understand that in many cases, what I see as wastefulness is "just" the consequence of advancement of society. Or aversion to risk (self-preservation?). Lots of other reasons.

But, most probably, it's ultimately driven by the bottom line.

Part One: FOOD

... definitely for this example, anyway!

It came as a shock to me back in the mid-90's when a friend of mine, working at the university residence hall cafeteria, shared that there was always A LOT of food left over - unserved! I'm not talking what was out at the buffet line! - and that all this food got thrown away after every meal.

Why?

Because even though the food could go to good use at any homeless shelter, the liability in case someone got sick off of the food was just way too high, so into the rubbish bins went all that food. What a waste!

Yes, I understand the risk aversion, especially in such a society where everyone sues everyone else at the drop of a hat it seems, but still... what a crying waste, eh?


... it got me wondering, back in Malaysia, how things would be in a similar situation: firstly, I wonder if the law explicitly addresses "expiration of food", or liability of "food donors" ... then again, even if such laws exist, we all know how well (more important) existing laws are upheld / implemented, riiiiight?

... I don't know about local school / university cafeterias, but isn't it whispered that many places just "recycle" their curries and other food? That's how they consistently have great flavours, right?? Ugh :p

... ... aaanyways, I digress ... this was supposed to be an intro to some recent incidents of wastefulness I've observed / taken part in ... but it's taking too long so I'm breaking it into three instead... stay tuned ... next topic is DUST followed by DVDs.