One Man's Trash...

In my article entitled, "You'll Dig to China..." from 02.05.2012, I mentioned I have been "getting rid of the junk so that I can see my good stuff."  And by "good stuff" I mean I want to be able to access and enjoy those items that are really important to me and my family.  But we need to be very cautious about "getting rid" of things as well.  If you just "trash" your junk, you're just moving the problem from being yours to being others' problem...for years to come.  And I hope you'll take my word for it; the last thing we need is more items heading for our sanitary landfills (...we called it "the dump" when I was a kid).

Wikipedia has an article on Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle (renamed Waste Hierarchy) that describes several ways getting rid of junk.  The first concept, Reduce, emphasizes the concept of buy less and use less, which is a very important concept of Being Pragmatic.  Just don't buy it in the first place...a principal consideration in a concept known as Pre-cycling.  This conserves the nation's resources and conserves the money your own pocket-book.  Just say no. 

Reusing products can take on a few different forms.  The first is to adaptively reuse items that you are about to get rid of.  Is the only possible destination for the unwanted item (or perhaps unneeded or extraneous item) the trash...headed for the landfill?  Or can that item be used for something else that would keep you from spending your money on an expensive retail item.  I remember my grandfather reusing baby food jars as individual storage bins for nails, screws, tacks, etc. 

If you can't directly reuse the item, is it possible for the item to be donated to a local charity such as a thrift store (Goodwill, Salvation Army) so that someone else might reuse it?  In some cases, you MIGHT be able to reduce the amount of Income Tax you pay by making such a donation.  Please don't take my word for it...ask your tax professional.  The Salvation Army even has a handy Donation Value Guide that you might find useful.  Or...maybe YOU might find something you need at a much reduced cost at one of these thrift stores, thereby reusing something being discarded by another.  Of course, this concept also works very well in Garage Sales and resale websites such as eBay and Craigslist. We can make back some of our money that we have wasted on the junk.  Yes...One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure in more cases than we actually consider. 

And finally, there is Recycling.  I am fortunate to live in a community that provides single stream, curbside recycling (we can put all that is locally recyclable into a single 96 gallon trash cart without sorting).  Every two weeks, a truck comes by and collects these items separate from our garbage stream, and they separate it and sell it.  If you aren't so fortunate, you may wish to have a look at other alternatives in your community where you collect and separate your own recycling and take it to a recycling facility yourself.  A word of caution, many recycling processes are not able to deal with sheet plastics (such as plastic store bags and bulk purchase wrappers) and Styrofoam.  Generally speaking, sheet plastics wrap around machinery and make a general mess (including in our oceans).  And Styrofoam generally crumbles and also makes a big mess.  To properly address Styrofoam, a recycling effort must have a special machine to melt the Styrofoam...typically cost-prohibitive.  These two items bring us back to the concept of Reduce, mentioned above.  I have been trying to use reusable grocery store bags and avoid Styrofoam where possible.  




And by the way, re-using shopping bags is not a new concept.  Here is a photo of a paper bag from World War II that is self explanatory!


Wow...that's a lot of effort to get rid of junk in a responsible manner.  I've been working on doing this the right way for a few months.  I also plan to Be Pragmatic, and "just say no" on as much future junk as possible.  Don't get caught in that trap of being a Hoarder!  If you haven't seen the Hoarder TV Show, it's intense.  One last thing, if you don't already know, trash is not just a landfill problem.  Have a look at what trash is doing to our oceans.  I want to be no part of that.  It's not Being Pragmatic about our future!