A Throw Away Culture

We live in a world where people are intentionally making products that will fail in a short period of time so that consumers will have to replace things more frequently therefore padding the pockets of the upper management. Basically, we live in a trash world. No wonder the landfills are filling up much faster than expected. Everything we buy is designed to fail. And often quality options are not available or are financially far out of reach for the average American.

Let me give you several examples:

We have a toy tractor and trailer that were given to Kev's dad when he was just a sprout. It is all metal. It has multiple moving parts. You can steer it with the actual steering wheel and the trailer can dump its load by moving a lever. All of these moving parts still function exactly as they should. The thing is in the neighborhood of 65 years old and it has only broken once. And then all it took was a friend to weld it back together and it was good as new. Still is. Except for the paint job, of course. And a missing exhaust pipe. But seriously, one missing part in 65 years is pretty good.

On the flip side, in my years as a parent I've purchased countless toys for my kids which have ended up either being totally stupid because they don't work anywhere remotely close to what we had hoped or ended up breaking far sooner than any of us would have liked. And those crappy toys end up in the trash. And not because they were cheap either! I'm not afraid to spend a bit more on toys that will last (we only buy real brand name Legos over here, no cheap knock offs) but it seems like they are getting harder to find.

And it's not just toys that are going down the crapper. For the first years of my marriage, I made applesauce at my in-laws place using my mother-in-law's super handy all metal Victorio strainer. When I spotted one just like it at IFA a few years back, I was thrilled because I thought for sure they were a thing of the past and purchased it immediately. But when I got it home and opened it up, I discovered that unlike my mother-in-law’s saucer, almost all the parts are plastic. It definitely works just fine, but there is no way it is going to last the forty or fifty years that hers has.

So what brought on this rant about the constantly declining quality of the goods available to us in this modern day and age? Two words: hair elastics.

Even though my hair is nowhere near as long as it was in my youth, I still have long hair which means I use a lot of hair elastics. Over the years, I tried a number of elastics but always came back to the Goody brand elastics. They were the best, holding tight and lasting a long time. Some years back Goody changed their elastics and they weren’t anywhere near as good. So I took to hoarding the remaining elastics in my stock knowing they wouldn’t last forever. Earlier this year I finally reached the end of those beloved elastics. And thus began my hunt for a decent replacement. It took me months and months and much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I bought more packages of elastics than I like to think about. And I ended up tossing most of them. They did not stretch as far or rebound as well which means they did not hold tight. They broke, often the very first time they were stretched. To sum it all up, they were all crap. I did finally find a decent elastic. Although they don’t last anywhere near as long as those old time Goody ones, at least they hold tight and last a month or so.

Unfortunately, those decent elastics are the big ponytail kind which means they don’t work for Malia. Her hair is still much finer and thinner than mine and so she needs much smaller elastics. When she was one I bought a package of Goody brand poly band elastics that worked great for little girl hair. They don’t last as long as other types of elastics, but at least they hold tight and can be used multiple times before they get too stretched out to be helpful. Three years later, we have reached the end of that package. So I picked up another package. They looked exactly the same. They were the same brand. The package was even exactly the same. But when I opened them up it quickly became clear that they were not the same. There has been a very steep decline in quality. I will have three or four break before I can even get one in Malia’s hair. Then they either break before the end of the day, usually tangling in her hair so much that they stay in place anyway but result in a huge tangle when it’s time to take them out, or break into four or five pieces when I try to take them out. They stretch much farther but don’t rebound as well so I can’t even get them in tightly which means they slide out before the end of the day. In short, they are total crap.

I’m totally frustrated. I have a child who loves her long hair because it is like Rapunzel. She asks for hairstyles based on how the princesses wear their hair. She doesn’t talk about braids, she talks about Elsa hair or Anna hair. She doesn’t care for headbands, won’t wear them for longer than a few minutes. And she’s still young enough that she needs something to help keep her hair out of her face and her food. All these things mean we need hair elastics. And I can’t find any decent ones. Honestly, there have been almost swear words in the hair care aisles of my nearby stores.

So if any of you happen to have found a brand of hair elastics that won't result in me accidentally teaching my not quite 4 year old that it is appropriate to use the word "crap" six times in a single sentence, please pass along your knowledge. Because I'm fed up. If one more thing in my house breaks due to shoddy workmanship or cheap materials I'm going to...sigh...end up buying another crappy replacement because just like everyone else, I have no choice.

No, I'm Not Kidding

This morning Matthew had a field trip to the dump. Yup. The local landfill. I was pretty apprehensive about the whole thing. I mean, I remember going to the dump with my dad when I was a kid and it smelled like the diaper pail times about a million. And smells bother me. A lot. So I really didn't want to go. But Matthew was so excited about it that we couldn't skip it. And guess what? It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

We met in the office and learned about how they prepare the ground for the trash so the groundwater doesn't get contaminated. We learned about how they move and compact the trash. We learned about what can and cannot be recycled. And we learned that our landfill was supposed to last for thirty more years but at the rate we're going it is only going to last another sixteen. It seems that in Utah we only recycle about 15% of our trash while nationwide the rate is about 45%. We also learned that the reason we cannot put glass in our recycling bins is that the closest location for recycling glass is in Colorado. Because Utahns don't consume many alcoholic beverages, we don't actually use anywhere near as much glass as the rest of the country. And because we don't have glass in our recycling, Salt Lake is the only place in the country that can recycle plastic soda bottles into new plastic soda bottles because there is no chance of broken glass getting into the plastic.

After the educational part, we got on a shuttle bus and rode out to the actual landfill part so the kids could see all the big trucks at work. The bus was completely enclosed so we didn't even smell anything icky. We also got to see a brand new giant hole that is nearly ready for trash. The current hole is almost full. Our guide told us it is rare to get to see a new hole that doesn't actually have trash in it yet.

So, much to my surprise, it was actually a really interesting field trip. Our guide told us the kids usually talk about garbage for weeks after visiting. Matthew is already much more willing to run things out to the recycling bin for me, so we'll see how long his fascination with garbage lasts...