The Garbage (not to be confused with Garage) Project

 

I'm not the most environmentally conscious person out there, but I am left-leaning by nature (or possibly nurture) and have become increasingly aware and bothered by the trend of disposability in our culture. I seem to recall a time when products were made to last, whether it be timelessly styled Levi jeans that were worn for years or handed down from one family member to another, or a piece of 'starter' furniture that was made of actual wood or glass, not particle board that disintegrates when it gets slightly wet, or more drastically falls apart when one attempts to move it from a first apartment to a first house.

To step outside the bounds of actual expertise (that's the whole point of being a dilettante, right?), the Dabbler is going to wax philosophic for a moment or two on the cycles of consumption these days, which seem to be getting shorter and shorter, but are a necessity of global capitalism and continuing economic growth. I just read Freakonomics, after all, which may have been one of the more absurd bestsellers that I've had to endure (a 'club' assignment, not of my choosing); but it made me feel like it's my right -- no, my duty -- to ask 'probing' questions about society, and to provide 'provocative' (but not necessarily empirically sound or highly substantiated) answers.

First, I need only look at my drawer full of cell phones to provide an example of the shortened product cycle of which I speak. I have had mobile phone service since moving to Los Angeles in 1996, when my Motorola phone weighed about 2 pounds and I paid $20 a month for 20 minutes of airtime. It was, of course, for emergency use only. But as the times changed the phones got smaller, the plans got better, and my phones concurrently got smaller and my time allowances increased. In but a brief nine years, I have accumulated no less than 6 mobile telephones, 12 chargers (one car and one home charger for each phone), one charging dock and 3 telephone numbers.

While I have finally settled on a telephone number that I can legally have transferred from one carrier to another if I choose a new service, most phones are locked and changing service would require me to choose a new phone. Hell, I don't even like the phone I currently have so I probably won't keep it that long anyway before up- or side-grading. By the time the decade is over, my cell phone drawer might look a little something like this:

This is in fact not my cell phone drawer, but rather a photograph by Chris Jordan, whose recent solo photography show was titled 'Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption'. His images also include a haunting pile of chargers, an impossibly long panoramic pile of crushed cars, and discarded microchips and motherboards that look like strange, dystopic landscapes. His images made me think about something that I had been pondering, albeit without much guilt, in the past. Where does all this stuff go? His statement is of course on a grander scale than the Dabbler's. But I recognize that I am a small part of a very large problem and feel that the first step in curbing this problem is to admit that it exists.

Just a few days ago, I was asked what I wanted for a holiday gift and I told Jewish Santa that I was hoping for a new iPod. I asked for this knowing full well that I already have an iPod. I have had it for 3 years. But my second generation dinosaur is thick and heavy (at a whopping 8 or 9 ounces) compared to the new offerings (now at least 5th generation), and doesn't store as much music, doesn't have a color screen, and doesn't stream video. Not that I have even filled up the 10 gigabytes of space on my current contraption. And, somehow, I even take pride in the fact that I have managed to keep my iPod for three whole years without succumbing to an upgrade.

Apple, a company known for its forward thinking philosophies -- their slogan used to be "Think Different" and if you didn't remember this they trotted out their old Rosa Parks ad last week to remind us -- is banking on customers wanting something newer, something better, something sleeker. The speed at which they announce new products is as fast, or even faster, than Nike, who used to have one Air Jordan style on the market for years, but now changes models on a monthly basis. In a slightly nefarious strategy, Apple corporate doesn't even let their retail outlets or resellers know when a new product is about to be released until the day it is announced and simultaneously put on the market (hence, this strange website devoted to 'macrumors'). This seems like some sort of feeble attempt to protect their salespeople from the ire of customers who buy the iPod mini one day, and two weeks later hear that the iPod nano has struck. Their mini is obsolete, no longer even offered on Apple's website or at its stores; but hell, the sales force didn't know this so they aren't culpable.

The only course of action? The customer rides out the iPod mini for as long as he or she can handle not having the latest technology, then waits a cycle or two for generation seven or the iPod teensy-weensy (the size of a quarter?), shoving the mini in the same drawer as all those cellphones. Yes, Apple is on the cutting edge. The cutting edge of landfills.

So, just what am I doing about all this consumption? Not everything I could be doing. But a few things. First, bamboo flooring, not wood, will be used in the garage project. Bamboo is a grass that grows so fast, it matures within six years (as opposed to the sixty years it takes a common oak tree). So it's considered a highly sustainable, green product.

Next, we have adopted a new policy in our home. No individual bottles of water. We used to buy them by the case, take a bottle to the gym, on a walk, where ever. This was in addition to the five gallon bottles we were receiving from Arrowhead, which we used in the household (though I admit that sometimes I also cracked open a bottle at home rather than using the cooler). Instead, we have invested in durable, reusable bottles which we fill from our dispenser before going for our workout, on a walk, etc. This has proven to be not just an environmentally sound solution, but an economically beneficial one as well. You can get a bottle like the one pictured at left at Target for under $5.00, REI for $8.50, and North Face for $12.00.

Though my computer is getting outmoded and I would really like to go wireless, I am vowing to hold on to my iMac as long as possible. I try to drive a little less to save gas. I want a hybrid car but can't really afford one at the moment. Even if I cringe when my meal at semi-healthy fast-food alternatives like Koo Koo Roo or Baja Fresh comes on plastic plates they clearly don't recycle, I haven't figured out a solution to this other than not frequenting such establishments. And I have yet to take my vast collection of Tupperware to a restaurant, to transport leftovers in place of disposable take-out containers, as was suggested by my Tupperware 'lady'.

Is doing some things, and thinking about a few more, at least a start? Or is it just a way to assuage my guilt? Can one successfully dabble in being environmentally conscious? Probably not. I am realistic enough to understand that these little things I do will never amount to anything significant enough to counter an economy that depends on constant consumption. Hell, they hardly impact my own patterns of consumption, let alone a whole society's.

And with that, I leave you with one more mixed message: Jewish Santa, if you are reading this, I still want that iPod!