Americans have a lot of stuff. But we also get rid of a lot of stuff, throwing away 254.1 million tons of waste in 2013, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s 4.4 pounds per person a day, up 64 percent since 1960. But 34.3 percent of that waste was recycled or composted in 2013, compared to 6.4 percent in 1960.

In the last few years, Jack Lane has seen an uptick in the number of people who fix the heels on worn shoes instead of simply replacing them.

They’ve realized that it’s cheaper than buying new, even for inexpensive shoes, said Lane, owner of Clinton Shoe Center, where you also can fix luggage and replace zippers. And some customers keep bringing in pairs of well-loved shoes that fit just right, ones they never want to get rid of, she said.

“A woman that likes a certain handbag will do just about anything to keep it,” he said.

But not as many people are repairing shoes and other leather goods anymore. Back in the 1970s or early ’80s, a trade Christmas party drew 20 or 25 shoemakers from the Utica-Rome-Oneida area, Lane said. Now, Lane draws customers from as far away as Cooperstown because most of those cobblers have closed up shop. That certainly means more shoes are dying young, tossed when the heel or sole wears out.

Americans have a lot of stuff. But we also get rid of a lot of stuff, throwing away 254.1 million tons of waste in 2013, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s 4.4 pounds per person a day, up 64 percent since 1960. But 34.3 percent of that waste was recycled or composted in 2013, compared to 6.4 percent in 1960.

Many more unwanted items never enter the waste stream. Instead, they find new homes through Craigslist, thrift stores, auctions, garage sales, eBay and other services that sell used goods, as well as through donations to charities.

The process of throwing things away has gotten a lot more complicated, said Adam Smith, a professor of anthropology at Cornell University. He used the term “heirlooming” to describe a kind of recycling in which things are taken out of one context and put in another. Think of a grill sold on Craigslist, which might be used as a grill by the buyer or repurposed as a planter, he said.

“Disposing of stuff is a gigantic economic industry if you take all these kinds of disposing together,” Smith said.

The economy, he added, is about “managing, shaping, creating new and old relationships to objects.”

For every 10,000 tons of stuff we get rid of each year — whether through reuse, recycling or disposal — 648 jobs are created in areas such as computer reuse, wooden pallet repair, paper mills and landfills, according to the EPA.

Mary Gearhart makes her living helping old items find new owners. She owns The Queen’s Closet Consignment and Attic Addicts Estate Sales and Household Liquidations in Yorkville.

“If it’s got good life left in it, I’ll consider it (for sale),” she said.

What she can’t sell, she tries to donate.

Most of the people bringing consignments to her shop are professionals more interested in finding new life for old items than in making money, she said. They usually donate what she doesn’t take to sell in her shop, Gearhart said.

“Frequently, I’ll have people show up at the door with something and just say, ‘Can you find a home for this? I don’t want any money,’” she said.

Right now the market is good for functional items, no antiques, she said. Besides clothing and jewelry, her store has decorator lamps, bar stools, three vacuums (one too complicated for its elderly owner), a solid wood TV stand, an air purifier and a new countertop convection oven for which the senior who brought it in had no use, Gearhart said.

“My theory is no one should pay full price for anything in this world,” Gearhart said. “You shouldn’t have to. There’s enough stuff in this world, especially for day-to-day kinds of goods.”

The turnover of belongings is built into capitalism, which calls for people to buy a product again and again, Smith said. To keep people buying, manufacturers upgrade products.

“There’s nothing wrong with your current iPhone, but you create the pressure of a new form of consumer desire so you want to upgrade it and you begin to justify it by saying you need to upgrade,” Smith said.

And mass production eventually makes products so cheap that replacing them becomes less expensive than fixing them, he said.

“It’s extraordinarily wasteful, but that’s the thing that’s not calculated in the cost,” he said.

But society pays that cost in terms of new landfills, the cost of recycling and cleanup of toxic wastes, he said.





Durable goods in the municipal waste stream

Durable goods are things expected to last three years or more, such as a television,

armchair or washing machine. We’re throwing out a lot more durable goods than

we did decades ago. More are getting recycled, but most still end up in landfills or

incinerators. Durable goods accounted for 11.3 percent of the municipal waste

stream in 1960 and 19.9 percent of it in 2012. (Numbers are in thousands of tons).

RECYCLED PRODUCTS

1960 1990 2000 2013

Major appliances 10 1,070 2,000 2,620

Small appliances NA 10 20 120

Carpets, rugs NA NA 190 240

Rubber tires 330 440 1,290 1,930

Batteries, lead-acid NA 1,470 2,130 2,850

Selected consumer electronics NA NA 190 1,270

Other NA NA 760 240

DISCARDED PRODUCTS

1960 1990 2000 2013

Major appliances 1,620 2,240 1,640 1,850

Small appliances NA 450 1,020 1,830

Furniture, furnishings 2,150 6,790 8,120 11,610

Carpets, rugs NA 1,660 2,270 3,580

Rubber tires 790 3,170 3,640 2,840

Batteries, lead-acid NA 40 150 30

Selected consumer electronics NA NA 1,710 1,870

Other NA NA 13,740 18,660

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency



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