I can recall the times I threw good food, supplies and even clothes that I thought were not useful or simply I did not like anymore, and regret it because it makes me feel like the type of college students Eighner mentions in his writing. “To live in the streets I must anticipate my needs to a certain extent: I must pick up and save warm bedding I find in August because it will not be found in Dumpsters in November” (406). It is incredible how people like us with our hands full of privileges call some things garbage while for those that lack of them have to take advantage to sustain their lives in the present and the future. Now, I am certain that my trash will look different, or otherwise it will make me feel bad since I know someone else might want that piece of bread or need that pair of shoes.…
Countless items are discarded everyday, most people do not really stop and think to see…
Introduction: I will explain the concept of ‘value’. I will also briefly explain how this links with peoples ideas/impressions of rubbish and waste.…
Have you ever thought, where do all this trash go? Why do people bother to take such a dirty mess? Well, the book “Garbology-Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash” explains it all. Edward Humes wrote this book. Garbology is an informative book that talks about waste in general. This book is interesting because it states facts, statistics, and it a non-fictional book. From reading this book, readers can learn that trash can be a disaster or lead to positive things. Information in this book is important for everyone to read. This book explains how you can be rich from waste, how to take care of waste, and its effect on the environment.…
In 1983/84, the average amount of household rubbish per person per year in England was 397 kilograms (Defra, 2007), in the following years, this increased and by 2006/07, this figure had grown by 28 percent to 508 kilograms. This trend has been explained by the growing affluence of the general person and their greater amount of disposable income, which is then being spent on luxury products. As a result, more and more waste is being generated each year; this essay will explore the arguments around whether this ever increasing amount of rubbish has any value.…
It is common for people to throw away belongings that were once important to them. This is because our society has a tendency to be wasteful. In the essays “The Town Dump” by Wallace Stegner, “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner, and “The Town Dump” by Howard Nemerov, the authors all display their opinions when it comes to the topic of value, and items that have been thrown away. Through the use of imagery, the three authors depict their attitudes towards the idea that one man’s trash may or may not be another man’s treasure. Therefore showing that every object can have a value to a person that others see as invaluable.…
There has been a surge, in recent years, in interest in vintage clothing and this has been reflected in price as well. The deliberate wearing of vintage clothing rejects social norms of what is fashionable and trendy and proves that individuals can create their own sense of identity and originality. Often more affordable than high street shops and definitely unique, ‘thrifting’ has become similar to antique shopping. There are a multitude of events targeted at vintage-loving people that brings them together like dance classes, themed nights out, pop up fairs and even speed dating. Vintage clothes seem to be viewed as more individual and unique than contemporary fashion, even though at one point in time, they were most probably the norm in fashion. But the treasure hunting to find a piece of clothing and the combination of different garments confers the wearer a sense of…
The most important lesson gained from Eighner’s essay was not only the means on how to survive if one is ever in this situation, but the amount of perfectly good stuff that has been carelessly thrown away. Eighner perpetually points out a very good point; we are, in fact, very wasteful beings. To us, everything is replaceable. We do not value the things we have to their full potential; and so when it eventually ends up in the trash, buried under broken eggs and spilled coffee grinds, it becomes a treasure to someone eager enough to appreciate…
It is clear that garbage is considered a problem. But pinpointing where the actual, factual and calculable problem lies is often very murky. Millennials seem to be confused or ambiguous to the problem of throw away consumption and we all hear we’re running out of planets every year in the summer. (Hume 2010; King etc. 2006)…
“If I throw out this one plastic bottle instead of recycling it, it won’t make a difference at all, right?” Wrong. This is the entire premises of Tragedy of the Commons. One person thinks their tiny action has no impact on the world, like throwing out a plastic bottle, but it does. Eventually all these tiny plastic bottles from everyone on the planet will add up along with their other trash, and then landfills are built and pollution levels rapidly rise.…
But it can be daunting to let go of our doctrinal walls. Similar to my wardrobe situation, my brain begins to wonder what life might be like if I let something go: “But I can’t let it go! I’ve carried it around with me from house to house, state to state! Some items I’ve inherited and I don’t even know how they got in my wardrobe!”…
Consumers also know that usefulness can fade, and the pleasure that came from new purchases can be fleeting. Apart from the usual solution to this problem, which is to buy more new items, it’s worth thinking that getting rid of items that are no longer needed or wanted can feel as good as getting it. Freecycle.org has made a name for themselves by doing just that. The concept has worked so well and because of word of mouth, many people want to become more “eco-friendly”, everyone cares about the environment and they want to do their part. One of the reasons they’ve been so successful, is because everybody wants to do their part to help the environment.…
Waste should not be seen as worthless junk, but more as a valuable resource, which could benefit people, industries and the environment. Many industries are picking up on this economical concept and changing the way they do business. These industries (commonly referred to as "eco-industrial parks") demonstrate how much can be gained by recycling and resource sharing. Within each park there are several industries working together in sharing the production and use of many costly resources. With all industries striving to achieve the common goal of maximizing revenue and reducing waste, one company's waste becomes another's resource. One method is where excess heat from a power plant warms nearby homes and agricultural greenhouses. These industries also utilize efficient recycling techniques in order to reuse valuable material. For example the sulphur scraped from the smokestacks of power plants is sold to dry wall companies. There are limits to how many lives you can give a pile of debris. In the long run, we have to reduce the amount of material we use and generate.…
An environmental issue that the United States has is the obedience to the concept of the 3R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle. People now live in such a consumer driven society that they fail to reason what their habits are causing the environment to become. Forests, oil, and other natural resources are diminishing because of Americans need for more, more, and more of the materials that come from them. But instead of giving back to the Earth, they just toss the unwanted, used products away and move on to the next thing.…
It is an old proverb saying “don't throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water”. It means that we should use the resources that we have to its fullest, before getting new resources and throwing away the old ones. What we don’t understand right now is that we are throwing so much that it’s likely to have fewer resources in the future. There are many reasons, to why we throw away the old resources; one of them is improving the standard of living by changing the household product and changing the furniture. Another reason is the increasing demand for food product, which plays a very important role in polluting our environment. Although many attempt are made to reduce the waste product by introducing the recycling concept and decomposing process, its not enough because we produce more waste products then we can recycle.…