The new deal: buy a cheap new car, use it for just a couple of years, then sell it again. This way you get as much out of it as possible. Do not buy an old exhausted car as cheap as possible: by buying a brand new one and trading it again within three years, you’ll get the best deal.
Whatever happened to buying something, then using it until it breaks down and you have to let go of it with tears in your eyes? I seem to be a dinosaur when it comes to the newest stuff and the way people HAVE to HAVE it. For example, I still am a proud owner of a huge, heavy and incredibly unwieldy TV with lots of frame and a small screen. It’s not handy, it’s not pretty and certainly not trendy, but to me the criterion that it still works is enough. Same goes for my car: it’s old, it rambles and it is from the 90ties, but it works fine and that just is enough.
I feel kind of alone in this. Everywhere around me I see and hear people who just randomly buy a new television, not because they need it but because they can and because it’s newer than the other one. The newest phones, the latest fashion notebooks. It develops all real fast and people then also buy it real fast, careless whether the ‘old’ version still works fine. Talking about waste people…
In the TV show Blood, Sweat & Luxuries (BBC Three) six young Brits visit third world countries to help dig up our luxuries like gold, leather and electronics. In Africa they came across huge e-waste dumpsites with piled televisions, computers and all our Western modern devices. You think it is recycled, but in real life it is just burned (and so toxic gas is released). Because of our constant urge to innovate, the piles of e-waste have become too big to recycle. Children live off these dumpsites and get cancer really young walking through the toxic gasses. And all because they have to clean up OUR mess that can’t get rid of easily and environmental friendly because we just buy too much of it too fast, because we have to renew our television every two years.
So, whatever did happen to just buying something and actually use it until it breaks down? And who do you do a favor by buying so much new stuff in such a short time. The environment? Certainly not. Yourself? Well, I doubt it if you’re sincerely happy by buying a new TV that is an inch flatter than the one before. And are you still satisfied with your new gain once you know children die of your ‘old’ junk?
No, you just and above all make the economy happy. The industries of greed and the theatre of consumerism by working and just spending money, trading it for a moment of pretended happiness when the curtains open and the music starts playing. But not too long, just until the next one comes along. It’s just too bad we’ve traded the value of buying for the ‘virtue’ of consumerism.
The University of Michigan has written an article on the alarming grow of e-waste and the impact of it on the environment and third world countries. Check it here.
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