Waste Not, Want Not

Come on everybody! Those trees aren't going to hug themselves! No but seriously today's subject is important I feel and it's going to be waste. Not in the "Your a waste of space and I hate you" way more the "Why are you throwing out perfectly good stuff?" way. Please do enjoy!

"Got a disposable income for disposable goods,
Got a hold of my paycheck don't know if I should,
A disposable partner I suppose it's alright,
I'll just just go get a new one every time we fight,
I got a disposable model, I ain't chosen no wife,
I'll dispose of these women if they don't swipe right,
Got disposable friends, they drive disposable cars,
Cause we ain't built to last, nah nah, we built to go fast!"

The King Blues - Opposable Thumbshttps://thekingblues2016.bandcamp.com/track/opposable-thumbs

Now I could write multiple posts about this song. I could write one about how good this song is and how good the album it comes from is. I could write one about it's critique of the way people treat women as disposable and how our culture builds this idea of women as playthings to be thrown away once they are "used up" or don't abide by society's rules and how it directly impacts and influences violence against women. I could write a post about how it confronts you with the notion of "disposable friends", how friendship has been influenced by modern technologies and the idea of friendship being watered down to a simple number on a Facebook page. I could write a post at just how nice it is to hear some proper political punk music in a time when we really need it. But I'm not going to write about those subjects. Well not today at any rate... I'm going to talk about the main subject the song deals with: waste. As the chorus so succinctly puts it:

"(We throw it all away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!
(Away, away, away, away!)
Look how far I've come with my Opposable Thumbs!"

Two weeks ago, we went to take the bins out. Just your general biowaste, cardboard, glass and landfill stuff. I went and opened the landfill bin and it was almost completely empty except that at the bottom were a load of old textbooks and various DVDs. The text books were in pretty decent condition and the DVDs were also fine if slightly dusty. The textbooks were all business and computer ones so not really worth anything and probably not all that useful to anyone. The DVDs though: Fight Club Special Edition, the Michael Caine classsic Zulu, a documentary about The Doors and the star-studded Lucky Number Slevin. What the Hell? Why would someone throw out perfectly fine DVDs? Not only that but perfectly fine DVD's of some really pretty damn good films? What gives? Fishing them out of the bottom of the bin, we've given them a new home, saving them from the landfill and saving the environment from them, at least for a little while.

Last week we went to take the bins again and AGAIN perfectly usable, perfectly good condition stuff that had no reason to be in a bin! Right next to the glass bin, a number of glasses and mugs, all unchipped and clean. In the landfill bin, cloth shopping bags (perfectly usable and some STILL WITH TAGS ON) full of plastic shopping bags. We use all of our plastic shopping bags as bin bags which meant this collection we found in the bin is around 6 months worth of bin bags I would say at a guess. It's insane! Why weren't the DVDs from before and the glasses from this time given to a charity shop? Why weren't the plastic bags used for bin bags? Why weren't the cloth bags just used?

This idea that things we don't need or want should just be thrown away is toxic, quite literally. Throwaway culture is destroying our planet, poisoning our seas, poisoning the very air we breathe. It really doesn't have to be this way. For my entire childhood my parents hoarded plastic bags, bits of string, plastic cable ties and even just straight up rubbish. The bags for bin bags, the string for a million different jobs, the plastic ties to hold effectively entire bikes together and the rubbish could be used for a myriad of different creations from junk monsters to spaceships to masks. These ideas of using as much as we can and wasting as little as possible are not new at all. When finding evidence of prehistoric people living in an area do you know what is usually found? Shards of bone, bits of burnt material and maybe a few flakes of flint. People used the entire animal, the whole plant, the whole tree. Very little was wasted because you couldn't afford to waste a single potential resource. Now, with our industrial processes and easy access to resources, this has gone out the window. I say bring it back.

So what can you do? Give old stuff to charities. Put an advert on Facebook. Ask your friends and family. Rethink the objects purpose. Search for things to use stuff for on the internet. Dig through the bins! Well ok so maybe don't do that but if you do see something in the bin and it isn't all nasty and it's safe to take it I say take it. People throw out a hell of a lot of stuff and sometimes it is worth checking out exactly what they consider trash. It could well be treasure.