Chapter Five: Disposal

The Disposal chapter in Anne Leonard's Story of Stuff really helped me consider some of the priorities that we should have when identifying the way we handle our waste. I am one of the many who believes that a large-scale difference is made by a series of small-scale changes. The disposal chapter however made me consider where these changes would be most effective, and more specifically the changes I should make pertaining to my class project. For my project I elected to work on campus-wide recycling initiatives. While my initial intentions were solely to add more recycling receptacles around campus, I think that educating the student body along with this should be a focus.

In the disposal chapter Leonard discusses the distribution of where our waste comes from. The most shocking fact to me was that 76% of all waste is industrial waste, as compared to 2.5% municipal solid waste (garbage). While production methods need to be changed, the obvious use and wastefulness of our society was still very evident. I thought that Leonard's discussion of the stigma of used goods in wealthy countries (such as the US), as compared to less wealthy countries was very accurate. People in this country including myself usually are not particularly keen of the idea of using something that is old. People don't like the idea of acquiring something that is old, let alone using something over and over again. Additionally it is no secret that the US produces a staggering amount of waste. The average person accounts for 4.6 pounds of waste everyday, which is up from 3.6 pounds in 1980. Just one portion of this waste is plastic bottles, where there are 150 billion single use beverage containers used every day. Something that is unbelievable when you really think about it.

Obviously there is a huge gap here between the amount of things we consume, and the actuality of what it takes to produce these goods. People in our society use far too much, but that doesn't change the fact that much of it can be recycled. The fact that the majority of waste comes from the production process makes me think that it is much more important to limit the amount that we buy new materials then I ever did before. For this reason I think it will be critical to couple my recycling project with an education portion as well, so we can get people to use less then they do right now. I think for the most part people just don't understand that buying containers everyday and recycling them is not enough(although its an improvement over just throwing them away). While I still believe I need to make every effort I can to help ensure that items that can be recycled are, I think it is equally as important to make sure people know how much it hurts the environment to buy any item at all. Another fact from the Story of Stuff was that for every amount of waste we throw out, 40 times that waste was created for it to even be produced. That being said, the first thing is to make sure we don't continue to add to the problem.

--

Waste is defined by where something is, not what it is.

-Kosa Goucher-Lambert

Extraction: The Story of Stuff

Annie Leonard's chapter on extraction, or the process of removing resources from the earth to make all of our "stuff", offers an often-ignored perspective of the flaws in our culture of excess. For me personally, it's easier to think about the consequences of "stuff" in terms of steps further down the line - the pollution produced by the factory that makes a cell phone, the exploitative human labor used to craft that pair of running shoes.
As college age students I think we often take pride in being globally aware citizens, we know that we should buy organic food, try and avoid driving cars, recycle our containers, bring reusable bags to grocery stores, these all are all acts that I and I know many of my peers do frequently. Yet trying to find an environmentally, globally aware college student without a lap top, a cell phone, an i pod, and a number of other similar items would be hard to do. The corruption and human devastation behind the metals in these common and seemingly essential items are well hidden, probably due to corporate efforts to keep them so. It’s possible that the cell phone I was just talking to my parents on helped fuel conflicts in the Congo. This had never before cross my mind.
Leonard makes the point that such items are also designed to be short-lived, and our consumer society drives us to also want to get the newer, better version of things even when the older version is still function. I mean, who doesn't want the i phone 4? I think it’s important to understand the implications of owning so much “stuff”, and understanding the cost, not in a monetary sense, of the things go into making our “stuff”. This probably isn’t going to convince me to forgo a cell phone, but I’ll make sure I get all the life I can out of the one I have.

-Anna Dalton

Chapter Five-Disposal

As I was reading The Story of Stuff I was constantly taken aback by the amount of "stuff" that we throw away. Obviously, this is not some recent discovery but it is still surprising to have the pure amount of disposed goods laid out for us in actual tonnage. Industrial production waste makes up a great majority of the totals disposal yet, in the US, very little is required of large producers to clean up their own messes and operate more efficiently. Much of the monetary burden for taking care of the waste lies unfairly on the American taxpayer. As can be imagined, the largest waste producers in the US have their interests represented strongly at both the state and national levels and legislation to meant to minimize industrial waste is seen by the industry as detrimental to their short term profits and thus fiercely opposed. There are a few large companies, namely Interface, that have taken substantial steps to reduce their own waste and develop innovative new means of operating in more sustainable fashions, but unfortunately the industry by and large lags behind these few shining examples. Legislation has proven to be an effective option for waste reduction reform in a wide variety of foreign countries, as well as our own, and we as American citizens and voters should make an effort to encourage our legislators to support further measures to protect our water, air and health as well as lessen the destructive power of our species' presence on our planet.

Consumption at Oxy

This past week I went on the 'Toxics Tour,' a tour led by the Communities for a Better Environment (CBE). The tour took our group around Los Angeles looking at the factories in highly industrial areas such as Vernon and Huntington Park, eventually leading us down the 710, alongside countless semi-trucks, past the oil refineries, to the port of Los Angeles. The port is the heart of the distribution Annie Leonard touches on in chapter three of The Story of Stuff. If you haven't seen it yourself, I would recommend taking a trip over down to the port. There are so many shipping containers, it takes a second to realize how big they actually are, each "could hold all of the contents of a three-bedroom house" as Leonard says. Its amazing to see the massive amounts of what we consume at the hub of distribution. It wouldn't be far fetched to wager that most of the goods inside these containers are headed to a Wal-Mart, Costco or the Target in Eagle Rock Plaza frequented by Oxy students.

As horrible as our dependency on the globalized distribution of goods we consume is, Annie Leonard does offer great alternatives. I checked out a couple of the websites she suggested and think it would be a good idea to share these resources with students at Oxy.

www.goodguide.com

GoodGuide "provides the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of consumer products."

This site is a great way to hold yourself accountable for what you purchase, and also could be a good way to hold the college accountable for what they are making available to us.

www.freecycle.org

This is "a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free."

My family has used this to get rid of old appliances etc. This would be a great resource for students at the beginning of the school year (as an alternative to constant Target runs) and end of the school year as an alternative to throwing everything away.

Chapter 1: Extraction

In The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard proposes a complete paradigm shift in which we look at the world not through the lens of economic growth and pure unfettered capitalism -- but through an alternative framework that focuses on serving the planet and the majority of its people instead. Our current model, she writes, is simply unsustainable, "compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (xxxiii).

This dose of reality, I suspect, will be hard for many of us in the developed world to accept. For one, too often we define our success by the amount of Stuff we can buy. Secondly, our immediate livelihoods depend on jobs that, for the most part, depend on consumption and exploiting the world's resources. It's difficult to think about the long-term, when for many Americans, their current economic needs are barely met. This makes saving the planet (literally) too daunting of a challenge -- too far away and abstract -- which leads to inaction until finally it's too late, when we have reached our limits and people start pointing fingers at each other.

However, Leonard says it's not all hopeless. As consumers, we can one by one start to demand more sustainable solutions, eventually achieving critical mass. Incremental changes in consumer behavior and consumer demand can make a huge difference when multiplied out by millions. A starting point for Oxy could be figuring out just where our paper comes from, as Leonard notes that for every ton of paper, 98 tons of other resources are used (1). Perhaps as students, we can push for sustainable procurement policies -- e.g., require recycled toilet paper -- that minimize this waste.

In chapter 3 of Annie Leonards "Story of Stuff," she discusses how mass produced goods are distributed to consumers across the country and world. She highlights how costly the mass production phenomenon is, both because of long transportation distances and increased consumption. At Occidental I see the two most effective tactics to decrease these costs is to increase local food consumption and educate residents about reducing needless buying.

The Marketplace has already begun to buy more of their food from local distributors, but this is only a small portion of the total. One idea to help increase this would be to encourage students to write letters and/or send emails to the Marketplace staff requesting larger amounts of local food. This could be easily spearheaded by a single person by having them draft the email/letter and then distribute it to their peers. Additionally, students could make an effort to purchase more of the locally provided goods--Usually the blackboard at the front of the marketplace says what the current local goods are. Additionally, Marketplace administrators could be contacted to discuss selling food from the on campus garden at the Marketplace.

To help the students of Oxy reduce their consumption, I suggest launching an educational campaign. This campaign could discuss the high costs of consumption similarly to how The Story of Stuff does, by showing the path that goods take to get to consumer. To distribute this information, we could utilize many of the campus resources. To list a few: The Oxy Weekly, the Catalyst television show, posting flyers in dorms, etc. Residential Education could help us with this by distributing flyers through RA's and having them post them around the dorms.

Chapter 4: Consumption

With so much of the world’s population and many in the United States unable to meet their basic human needs, I find it appalling how much we, Occidental College students waste. At the conclusion of every school year, numerous articles of clothing, shoes, binders, textbooks, hangers, plastic containers, pretty much anything you can think of are simply thrown out. Last year I lived in Sterns, and our entire hallway became one giant trashcan, overflowing with items from the improperly used recycling bins (not that they were usually used correctly anyway). I’m sure most other students living on campus experienced the same situation in their dorms.

In examining what people were throwing away, I found many of the items to have been never used, such as the Dr. Scholl’s shoe inserts, make-up bushes, lotions, razor blades, etc. Most of the other items in the pile were gently used and certainly the majority of the items could have gone to people in need, rather than a landfill. I understand that many people who live across the country, out of the state, or even those who have to fly home do not want to deal with the expense or hassle of having to store or pack these items, especially when they can easily be re-purchased. For many others, these items are thrown away out of sheer laziness, instead of donating or saving them. As Annie Leonard states, “consumers are not just resigned to the practically disposable nature of this Stuff; we’ve come to accept it” (162). While our RA’s decided they would collect clothing and bedding to donate to Goodwill, or another thrift store, I highly doubt anyone was going to take the time to sort through the other miscellaneous items in the hall. As other students have proposed and we’ve discussed in class, Oxy should create a secondhand/ thrift store to reduce to amount of usable goods going to landfills and enable students/ community members to reuse them. A service could even be set up with RA’s or students that are interested in implementing the store, to go to the dorms to collect and haul the items.

As clearly demonstrated through this example of overconsumption, we need to re-evaluate our spending and stop buying more than we need. Additionally, our arbitrary perceptions of waste and the social stigma associated with reusing needs to change. “Waste is defined by where something is, not what it is. It’s about context, not content” (183). While most items can be reused, those that don’t want to should at least give others the opportunity. As corny as this idiom is, “one man’s waste is another man’s treasure.”

Chapter 3: Distribution, Selling an Image Not a Product

Chapter 3 in Annie Leonard’s The Story Of Stuff focused around the distribution of Stuff as she refers to it. I have read previous research regarding the distribution of material goods throughout the world and what kind of environmental impacts it has. This chapter though helped show some other aspects of distribution that I was not as familiar with. The opening section talks about how large companies like Nike and Apple aren’t exactly selling you the product they directly. They are trying to sell you the image or brand of their company that is encompassed in the stuff the consumer buys.

I am working on creating more water refill stations around campus with some classmates in the UEP 246 section. This idea of selling the brand or image of a company has a very strong role when it comes to bottled water. Many people falsely believe that bottled water is better for you, when in fact many bottled water companies have the same water quality as the tap water most people already receive. Not only students at Occidental, but also millions of people in the United States have a stigma about tap water. Due to genius marketing, bottled water companies have made the public think that purchasing bottled water is not only healthier but a sign of higher class. This advertisement has led bottled water into a four billion dollar industry. Although the bottled water market is shrinking within the Occidental campus due to price increases on bottled water, I think that there will need to be a shift in thinking when it comes to the difference between tap water and bottled water.

Disposal and Occidental College

Every year at Occident College tons of waste is created (food waste, paper waste, water waste, plastic waste, etc.). Although a few percentage of students are from other parts of the world or try to not create waste, the majority of this school has an American mentality when it comes to waste. Americans do not see the potential in trash! Trash is a very resourceful tool if people learn how to utilize it correctly. According to Anne Leonard, "communities that own the least amount of stuff [is when you see] just how subjective [the] line is between waste and resources" (184).

Occidental college produces a lot of food waste. Luckily, the school is learning about composting and the benefits that come along with it. When the school composts wasted food, it goes directly to the school's garden. This creates an eco-friendly cycle of new food. However, Occidental College has not taken advantage of the garden per-say. The Marketplace (the school's Cafeteria) does not sell or cook the food from the school's own garden. Hopefully, this will change in the future to make the school more sustainable.

At the end of each year when students move out of their dorms and go home for the summer, they leave very useful "junk" behind for the trash people to pick up. Some of this "junk" may contain working ipods, lamps, sheets, school supplies, ect. Most of the stuff people throw out at the end of the year is in perfect condition and can be used by anyone. From personal experience, I know this junk is extremely resourceful. I got a nice lamp for my desk this year. To fix this problem, the school should sift through the stuff at the end of every year and possibly give it was to goodwill or sell it to students.

The United States produces about 254 million tons of trash every year and of that 254 million tons, only 85 million of it is recycled (229). Recycling is a very good step into the light of sustainability. Over that past couple of years, Occidental has been enlightened to recycle paper, plastics, glass and aluminum. In order to increase recycling on campus, colored recycling cans have been placed all over the campus. For the most part, this system is working for the campus, but there is not enough education on campus about recycling and there are not enough recycling cans in convenient areas. Students on campus need to be shown what exactly is recyclable and what is not. Often, student will throw trash in the recycling bins, defeating the purpose of the cans. The second problem is that students will not recycle a bottle if there is not a recycling bin in sight.

In the end, what is comes down to is that we should not be focused on how much we recycle or how much resources we can get out of trash, but how little we can waste. Leonard states that, "focusing on the wrong end of [waste and recycling] can point our efforts in the wrong direction" (229). I believe it is important for Occidental College to look into the Zero Waste programs to learn how to decrease the school's footprint. "Zero waste advocates look at the broader system in which waste is created, from extraction to production all the way through consumption and disposal. In this way, Zero Waste is a philosophy, a strategy, and a set of practical tools" (234). From these programs the school will learn to reduce consumption, make resources out of trash, recycling, ect.

Chris Monteath

Community vs. Isolation

A lot of people are touching on the issue of community here at Occidental and Its relation to the campus's sustainability. What I want to touch on is student space and its relation to community. Because community affects sustainability and space arranges community I believe the design of student space has a significant impact on the campus's sustainability. Over the last two years I've come across a few oddities which I believe inhibit community.

1. Rangeview
This is the dorm which is the largest, newest, and cleanest. Despite the attributes, rangeview feels like a hotel. Hotels are nice but you should not be staying at one for longer than a week.

2. Lack of furniture around dorms
Many of the dorms have areas just outside the doors perfect for tables, chairs, and benches. You can't expect students to gather and relax on a slab of concrete. Why have a patio if it's never used?

3. lack of side walks
The campus is clearly designed for cars. The lack of sidewalks are not only inconvenient but dangerous.

4. Johnson "student center"
Despite being the "student union" not many students ever go down there. At one time it was a hub of student recreation. The pool tables are now gone and the bookstore has appropriated the best part. Imagine if students had the space for a pub or a program like Oberlin's clothing swap and free store:

Clothing Swap and Free Store

At the end of spring and fall semesters, a group of 10 student employees called the College Recycling Assistants hold a campus-wide event called “The Big Swap." At the Spring 2006 Big Swap, College Recyclers collected 388 bags of clothing, books, and dorm room items. The items are collected from each dorm by the College Recyclers and taken to a centralized location in the student union building. For about a week, the Recyclers keep everything that has been collected in this main space and people are able to come and take items they can put to use. At the end of that week, College Recyclers then take the remaining items to local charities. This greatly reduces the number of useful items entering the waste stream when students clean out their dorm rooms and off-campus houses at the end of each semester.

While in the past this “swap" only took place twice a semester, the college has now located a permanent space for a “Free Store" in the basement of Pyle where reuseable items of all kinds can be donated or taken for reuse. The new Free Store had its grand opening on February 22, 2007. It provides an excellent avenue for reuse of materials on campus, diverting useful items from the landfill and consequently reducing the extraction of natural resources.

The Story of Stuff

Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff is a useful text that influences the reader to reevaluate their own lives, and where each individual fits into the spectrum of our planet's dire environmental issues.

Leonard's chapters focusing on consumption and waste were most salient to me. I normally consider myself very waste conscious, making sure to "recycle" as much as possible. However, Leonard's explanation of the issues of consumption made me realize that my efforts to recycle are completely undermined by my disregard for the first "two R's"-reuse and reduce.

I suffer from the same state of mind that most Americans do: we always need more, and we constantly need something better. I consider shopping to be a hobby of mine, which is problematic on many levels. As I read The Story of Stuff, reflecting on my own consumption habits, I immediately thought of when I worked at the popular clothing store Forever 21. Forever 21 is known for having a huge variety of clothing at very low prices, and one of their unique attributes is that they get new shipments every day. For one, this means that enough merchandise is bought from the store to have room for hundreds more items to arrive every day. Also, whenever I was put in charge of merchandising for the day, I would spend hours opening boxes, plastic bags, unwrapping saran wrap, and disposing of the packing peanuts and other packing materials. Apart from the cardboard boxes, none of the other materials were recycled, rather just thrown in the dumpster. These process of unpacking the new shipments and disposing of the packaging is a process that happens every day, 364 days a year. On top of just unpacking shipments, there's still countless waste factors that go into operating this Forever 21-the plastic bags given to the shoppers, the textiles and materials that all of the clothes are made up of, and of course the "old" clothes of the consumers that are being replaced by their new Forever 21 purchases. And of course, this is just one store in the middle-of-nowhere-Indiana. I am overwhelmed to think of this on a global, let alone national level.

One solution I am already utilizing, even though I recognize that we can no longer try to "consume our way out of this mess", is to shop secondhand. Vintage (as we can observe amongst the Oxy "hipster" scene), is actually widely embraced in the fashion and style world. Rethinking what we call "waste" is one small, but necessary, step to ameliorating our consumption-induced crisis.

--Roxanne Butler

The Story of Stuff

Leonard presents an interesting, transcendentalist approach to our current environmental calamities. While we are bombarded with news of ways to produce our products more efficiently, Leonard argues that it is not energy or resource inefficiency that is our problem, but rather unsustainable modes of consumption. It is our quest for the new type of electronic, or faster car, or the coolest new toy, perhaps a facet of our post-industrial consumer society, that is not only wreaking havoc on our environment, but on our mental and physical health as well.
But Leonard is not naive enough to suggest that an intrinsic element of the American economy will disappear anytime soon. She provides numerous examples, from better shaped cell-phone chargers, to the promotion of libraries, that channel our drive for "stuff" into more environmentally-friendly means. "Change," she states, "will come...eventually." The question is, will it come soon enough?
Her discussion in Chapter 3 regarding distribution was quite interesting. The only way in which real change will emerge is from an eventual change in the consumption habits of the consumer. While one might suspect that environmental and financial considerations would always stand in opposition, Leonard points out that that is increasingly not true. In a world more reliant on pesticides and transportation for food, a sizable market for organic and locally-grown food has emerged. This market is also not simply rooted in environmental concerns, but also has health concerns of pesticides and financial concerns of transporting food from across the world. It is this type of developming market, coupled with increasing energy costs in world with depleting fossil fuels, that will drive an eventual environmental revolution.

The Story of Stuff

My UEP 101 class last year spent some time discussing Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, after watching her online video. The video only briefly summarizes the supply chain, but after reading chapter 3 on distribution I have a much better understanding of the way the system works at this step, and the problems that exist. Leonard begins by introducing the concept of “lean manufacturing and lean retail” (108). Companies are streamlining all of their production in an attempt to cut costs, including cutting workers’ bathroom breaks and forgoing factory safety features (109). Lean retail, the second part of the problem, refers to the business practice in which companies only produce goods as they are demanded. This system may be beneficial for the corporation and help them to save costs, but it hurts the workers by not providing consistent work (Leonard, 111). Professor Dara O’Rourke argues that “in the same way that Toyota workers are empowered to pull the stop cord on their assembly lines, we could have an entirely transparent system of supply chains in which all the stake holders (and community members) are encouraged to identify flaws throughout the system and halt production until that problem has been taken care of” (111). O’Rourke’s idea reminds me of what we are trying to do here on campus through Environmental Problem Solving, the Sustainability Fund, the garden, etc. The students have the power to address problems that we see and demand change. O’Rourke’s vision for change is a system in which “firms are pressured to produce goods not as cheaply as possible, but in ways that optimize labor, social, and environmental benefits” (111). The biggest issues here on campus are the environmental impacts of our energy and water use, consumption, and waste production. Leonard emphasizes that the distribution of consumer goods has just as much of an impact on the environment as the extraction, production, and disposal. Oxy has made some progress towards trying to buy more locally produced goods. Hopefully, during the course of this semester we can help Oxy become more sustainable by playing the role of the stake holders in O’Rourke’s system and identifying the flaws and initiating change.

Community Instead of Consumption

What I found to be the main point of Leonard's chapter on Consumption, is that as human beings, more stuff isn't what is going to make us happier. People believe that it will because of advertising and what people tell us. But in reality we need to be more conscious about creating lasting and genuine human relationships. A main point of the chapter seemed to be that a strong community will bring you happiness far more than that new Apple product or a new pair of shoes. I believe that here at Oxy we do have at least some sense of a community. There will be times when you see people spending a hour or two hanging out with friends in the Cooler or on the Quad at lunch. But at the same time, there are often times, when people are just sitting in their rooms on their laptops mindlessly browsing the internet. I believe that Oxy strikes a nice balance between consumerist and community. We are Americans and as such, we have mostly been raised to be consumerists, but if we can see the value in the tight community of a small college, then there is hope for us, in terms of consuming less. As a member in this community people need to remember to take a break from the books every once and a while and take an hour to just hang out with friends.

Consumption and Community

Reading Leonard’s chapter on consumption an idea that stuck out to me was her assertion that we need more than simply greener alternatives to what we already consume. She states, “trying to consume our way out of the mess we’re in is a familiar dead end” (174). I probably like many others at Oxy, do tend to fall into this mode of thinking. Much of the time my reaction is to try and find products that are produced in ways which are less exploitative or polluting and instead to consume greener, fair-trade products. But in the end this is still a form of consumption. According to Leonard, this concept of “greensuption” or “conscious consumption” should be practiced when we shop but “being an informed and engaged consumer is not a substitute for being an informed and engaged citizen”(175). Leonard’s solution to this in part participating in strong communities, which means, “we buy less stuff, use less energy consume fewer resources because we can share things and help one another”(176). This is where I feel that programs at Oxy can make a big impact on our consumption. Instead of simply shifting to buying greener products programs like bike sharing and zip car have the potential of contributing to Oxy’s sense of community and making the campus more environmentally friendly. So that instead of buying a more fuel-efficient car, students can join programs like zip car. To me, the idea of a secondhand store or exchange where students could drop off items they no longer want and pick up things they may need plays into this idea of building strong community resources as a way of reducing consumption. Not only will this be good for the environment, but also, according to Leonard, the decrease in consumption and having a strong local community will make us happier.

Sustainability, Ch. 4

I read Chapter four, the part about consumption. What with her introduction focusing on connectivity of all issues, the work-watch-shop cycle introduced in the introduction, and the general tone of the chapter, I came to the conclusion that reading any similar chapter would have contained almost the same message. Throughout the novel, Leonard is adamant that she is not attacking big business, and she IS right about that…what she is really attacking is the triumvirate of big business, government and culture, the latter two heavily influenced by the former. In fact, she attacks the culture, and the consumers who buy into it, much more than she goes after Walmart or Exxon, and when she does go after business, she takes shots at the Cold War military industrial complex and 1920s ad gimmicks rather than present ivory towers. I found it interesting that she advocates for New Urbanism (especially a return to the pre-Industrial Revolution small town) without saying it outright very often.

--Charles Bennett

Distribution/ Consumption

I want to start by tackling chapter 3 of Leonard's book on the distribution side of the spectrum. It seems the idea is to buy and sell as cheaply as possible maximising the profit while keeping the consumer happy paying rediculously low prices. This concept is as accepted too often by many Americans who love paying bottom dollar for everything. H&M is just one company metioned in her book that is a major contributor to over production and distribution of items. The focus has now been placed on addvertising and brand names rather than quality and longevity of products. Im not sure how to explain this other than an ideological change in hoaw people are buying and selling. Distribution changes have been directly correlated to the super market phenomenon and has both a positive and negative impact on consumers. Convienence is extremely important to the customer the ablitity to buy everything from cat litter to cookies has completly changed how people shop. What exactly will snap people back from this illusion that more is better or the cheapest item is the best? I have a bad feeling that abusing the system of globalization will have some lasting effects.

Ditching Secondhand Stigma

Reading Leonard’s chapter on Disposal got me thinking about the ways in which Oxy students dispose of their plethora of unwanted, dated, and/or broken items throughout the year, and in particular the end of the school year. Leonard explains that we as consumers are constantly throwing out perfectly good items because we don’t want to store them, we don’t know how to fix them, they aren’t cool anymore, etc. I must admit that I have been guilty of such actions, throwing something out at the end of the year because I don’t want to have to deal with mailing it back to Canada, or buying a new set of bedding for my dorm room each year because I didn’t want to have to deal with the old one over summer and such items are easy, and cheap, to replace. I also know that I am certainly not alone. Leonard states, “Waste is defined by where something is, not what it is. It’s about context, not content” (p.183). In other words, the idea of waste does not simply revolve around the actual object, but rather who views it as waste. Therefore, if it is knowledge that my waste could very well be considered something that is new and valuable to someone else, I really think Oxy should consider establishing a secondhand store/exchange where students could drop off items in good, working condition that they no longer want for whatever reason. I imagine the quantity and quality of clothing, books, electronics, furniture, and school supplies that would fill the store would be astonishing, and allow Oxy students to see that “used” and “secondhand” can be cool. Not only would the store prevent the unnecessary disposal of a wealth of valuable items much before they need to be, but it would hopefully teach students about the value of sharing and reusing, something that they could carry for the rest of their lives.

water fountains

analysis of water fountains