Consumerism

When Is It a Mistake?

|

Buying in Bulk: When Is It a Mistake?

I like the way Andrew Tobias talks about bulk buying in The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need: You can think of each bulk purchase as an investment, with a return equal to the savings you accrue by not paying a higher unit price for smaller purchases. If you lay out $110 today to buy a 12-bottle case of wine you’ll drink over the next month, instead of buying bottles one at a time for $10 each, that’s like earning a $10 return on a $110 investment in one month. On an annualized basis, that’s a rate of return well over 100 percent — far better than the stock market.

But that analysis relies on a few assumptions, the most important being that you will use the items you purchase. If you let products spoil, or you decide you don’t like them anymore halfway through the box, or if you forget what drawer your huge package of batteries is in, then you’re not getting as much value out of your bulk purchase as you had planned. Your effective investment return is likely to be negative; you would have been better off paying more per unit to buy less.

Pathological Consumption Has Become So Normalised That We Scarcely Notice It

|

Pathological Consumption Has Become So Normalised That We Scarcely Notice It

There’s nothing they need, nothing they don’t own already, nothing they even want. So you buy them a solar-powered waving queen; a belly button brush; a silver-plated ice cream tub holder; a “hilarious” inflatable zimmer frame; a confection of plastic and electronics called Terry the Swearing Turtle; or – and somehow I find this significant – a Scratch Off World wall map.

They seem amusing on the first day of Christmas, daft on the second, embarrassing on the third. By the twelfth they’re in landfill. For thirty seconds of dubious entertainment, or a hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit, we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations.

NPR

|

‘Secondhand’ Author Adam Minter Tracks What Happens To Your Used Stuff : NPR

Author Adam Minter remembers two periods of grief after his mother died in 2015: the intense sadness of her death, followed by the challenge of sorting through what he calls "the material legacy of her life."

Over the course of a year, Minter and his sister worked through their mother's possessions until only her beloved china was left. Neither one of them wanted to take the china — but neither could bear to throw it out. Instead, they decided to donate it.

Waiting in the donation line at Goodwill, Minter began wondering what would happen to the dishes: "It occurred to me this is a very interesting subject," he says. "Nobody really knew what happened beyond the donation door at Goodwill."

Minter had spent nearly two decades reporting on the waste and recycling industries. Now he began looking into the market for secondhand goods, both domestically and in Africa and Asia.

"Your average thrift store in the United States only sells about one-third of the stuff that ends up on its shelves," he says. "The rest of the stuff ends up somewhere else."

I was listening to this podcast earlier. It is a very interesting listen.

My Take on the Renewable Energy Fair

|

Two years ago I spent the day helping out at the Save the Pine Bush table at the Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Fair. Long day at the table but I got to meet a lot of interesting people and connect up with a lot of old friends. Most importantly I got to share about the legacy of Save the Pine Bush.

The fair was an interesting event with a variety of booths, although I got the impression that Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living was more about wealthy suburbanites making a political statement by consumerism then saving the environment. If you buy the right kind of automobile, install the right kind of solar panel, buy the right kind of food, and install the right kind of window insulation and underground heat pump, you’ll be closer to nirvana — and have such a good feeling deep inside.

Now I understand the fair costs money to put on, and they had to bring in commercial businesses who would use it at a platform to sell green-themed products. I also understand it’s good that these technologies are being advanced — wealthy suburbanites are willing to plunk down the big bucks for beta versions of the technology may help developers perfect them and make them better products. Only through widespread beta deployment of things like net-metered solar and geothermal wells will they ever get good enough to become part of the standard building code that everybody has to follow.

I had very little interest in most of the sustainable technology that had marketed there. I did think the electric cars were pretty novel — in principle if we are going to have automobiles — electric is the way to go. They are simpler and much easier to maintain. They use less energy and are more efficient then gas fired automobiles, even when you factor in the many inefficiencies of fossil electric generation. As renewables grow on the grid, their tailpipe emissions will fall even further. Much less maintenance and much easier on the brakes thanks to generator being used to turn braking energy into battery charge then brake pads turning energy into heat.

I also was impressed by how mainstream that ground heat pumps have gotten in recent years. If you have $50,000 to have some 400 feet wells dug in your backyard, you can use the constant 50 odd degree temperature of the earth to do most of the heating and cooling of your house, with only the power consumed to pump water through the great heat sink known as the earth. Potentially a really good technology, once it becomes more refined and the industry becomes mature.

The various vendors hawking grid-tied solar were pretty much run of the mill what you would expect, the same thing with the organic farmers booth, and those pushing boutique organic foods. I guess people are into that kind of stuff, but I had to shrug. From what I’ve learned about organic farming over the years — especially organic dairying — it’s mostly about paperwork and government food inspectors rather then revolutionary new ways to farm. Conventional farms — with their well established no-till methods are often just as good if not better for the land.

RPI or maybe it was NYSERDA had a pretty piss pour display that tried to show that LED bulbs are more efficient then compact florescent bulbs, halogen and conventional bulbs, but picked bulbs that were of different brightness and color. I guess what you get a rough comparison.

The activist booths where pretty much what you would expect — run of the mill campaigns against Styrofoam (which really should be banned in cities), advocating for more composting (again, good for cities), and various things calling for action on climate change. It’s really pretty gross how the current administration is doing everything in it’s power to sabatogue whatever maginal progress we were making on the topic. Maybe I shouldn’t throw up my hands at whole issue of political change, as we really do need to rethink how cities use energy, produce CO2 and dispose of wastes.

As much as anyone knows, I am fully aware that political pressure can make a difference on public policy. Laws, applying to millions of people and big institutions can have a big deal. Elections have consequences, something we’ve seen with the election of Donald Trump and his roll backs of the Obama environmental legacy. But I feel like so many of the environmental causes of today are cheesy, packaged for mass consumption and aren’t a real discussion of the choices our country faces. But I do see the alternative and importance of being involved. But somehow the campaigns on display by the various environmental groups, kind of just left a bad taste in my mind — too one-sided, too high on rhetoric and not on substance. Too much packaged for the suburban, feel good about the environment consumer. I guess that’s politics.

Maybe after spending so much time the previous week in the rough and wild country of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, I had trouble getting back into the green living way of thinking. I am just so turned off by the world of high-speed internet, big screen television, big houses even those with solar panels on the roof and geothermal wells outback. Homes with oversized recycling and composting bins, but also oversized trash bins to match their level of consumerism.

I feel like if you really wanted to be green, you would live in a small house, not have all the technology and television. Maybe live off-grid with composting bucket toilets and a trash burning barrel out back, but not with marble countertops or 2,000 square feet of room — with grid tied solar panels on the roof. A mini-house or shed-to-home conversion that doesn’t take much energy to heat — of any form. Or much electricity to run a handful of 12 volt LED lights, USB chargers, and a few very small appliances. Not some massive McMansion. Hunt deer and fish, hobby farm for food, rather then consume something organic, shipped from halfway across the world, wrapped in plastic destine soon for a distant landfill.

For me, saving the environment is doing without a television or high speed internet at home. It’s about using my local public library and public transit. It’s about leaving my truck parked at home and walking or taking a bus. Not the green technologies on display. Eventually, I do plan to live off grid, not just because it will make it affordable to own more land and live more simply, but because ultimately I believe that to be more sustainable without the easy tug of cheap electricity and all the easy tugs of modern living, like unlimited hot water, unlimited toilet flushes, and unlimited heat. Chopping your own wood,  maintaining your own water supply, maintaining your own electricity production system, disposing of your own trash, forces you to think about what it really means to be a consumer.

If you really want to save the environment, don’t buy more stuff, get rid of your television and internet, walk, bicycle, ride public transit and live with less.

Walmart 2-Day Shipping

|

I don’t have an Amazon subscription, because there normally isn’t that much i like to order online, but lately I’ve discovered the wonders of Walmart 2-day free shipping with a $35 purchase. It’s kind of nice to be able order things — products like blue jeans 👖 or pancake mix 🍳 — without having to worry about them not having your size and knowing the exact price before you check out.