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> The convenience of throwing something away is a triumph of modern civilization ... I think you got it backwards. Throwing stuff away was the normal way of l

> The convenience of throwing something away is a triumph of modern civilization ... I think you got it backwards. Throwing stuff away was the normal way of life before modern civilization arrived, just like defecating wherever you find convenient, hunting animals for dinner, or riding hoses on whatever side of road you like. The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away" stuff we don't need. Just like modern cars necessitated speed limits, stop signs, and annoying lane-changing rules, mass production requires one to think about how to dispose stuff without ruining ourselves. So, yeah I think you got it backwards. Maybe recycling doesn't work as well as advertised, but that doesn't mean we are off the hook. It just means we need a different solution.

benj111 7y ago
"The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away"" By the same token, it gave us the power to produce so much stuff that we can afford to throw stuff away. Who darns socks anymore? Or has their tv repaired? Your average family of 100 years ago was throwing away ashes and what? The rag and bone man collected rags and bones, veg peelings would have gone to a chicken/pig/compost. Paper probably went in the fire. Plastic was none existent, metal? (rag and bone man? I'm guessing there was a market for it somewhere). This was the situation in the UK at least.
- DocTomoe 7y ago
  > Who darns socks anymore? Or has their tv repaired? I have done both in the last two years. I also do not send my brand-new car to the junkyard once the ashtray is full. It's wasteful.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Wait, new cars still have ashtrays?
  - benj111 7y ago
    My grandmother darns her socks too. It isn't the 'normal' thing though, certainly not for younger generations. What were the economics of your tv repair, what was the cost of the repair v replacement and how old was the tv? Last time I looked into it, they were doubtful they could get the parts, and the likely charge was higher than replacing the tv. The same isnt true for emptying the ashtray. In fact I don't even need to take the car to the garage to empty the ashtray, I can do it myself!
daxfohl 7y ago
Even in old times it may be less true than you'd think. I was recently reading one of the Little House books to my kid and there's few sentences in there in their move to the west, how Ma cleaned up their lunch scraps and packing them along when on the pioneer trail in the middle of otherwise nowhere in their journey across the Dakotas.
- bdamm 7y ago
  Food for the chickens, perhaps?
  - em-bee 7y ago
    those people were moving to the west in search for a place to live. they moved because they couldn't live where they were. if they could afford to throw stuff away they probably would not have moved in the first place
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      To outfit a wagon to go West with all the supplies necessary cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of about $100K. Wagons, livestock, supplies to live on while travelling and when homesteading before the first harvest came in were not cheap. That’s without considering the materiel you’d need to set up a farm when you got to your homestead. North America was labour scarce compared to Europe from 1492 on. There was always a place to live and work to do for the able bodied who were willing to work. That’s why millions traveled from Europe to save large sums of money before going home to buy a farm or send for their families from home. People did not go West because they had no place to live.
      - em-bee 7y ago
        i mean live on their own land and have their own farm instead of being a laborer depending on a salary. and since it was expensive many put all they had into that and could not afford to waste any of it.
Smoosh 7y ago
The tragedy of it is that we are technologically better placed than ever to make and mend items which will last a lifetime, and beyond, but consumerism and never-ending economic growth mean that instead we have planned obsolescence, and almost everything made as cheaply as possible, with consequent reduction in quality and less satisfaction overall.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  Most garbage is not obsolete or broken equipment. Most garbage is packaging (cardboard shipping boxes, plastic yoghurt cups etc), which nobody wants or needs to last for a lifetime.
Liron 7y ago
I meant the convenience of tossing something away and having it go somewhere properly out of the way. You mention "defecating wherever you find convenient" - yes, another pleasure of modern life is that at any time I can walk to a nearby bathroom and defecate, and do so on top of much more sanitary infrastructure than we ever had in the past.
em-bee 7y ago
uhm no. i'd like to see some evidence to that. most of what we throw away is packaging. in the past there was little packaging. and most packaging was reusable, a cloth, a bag or a chest for example. if it wasn't for packaging, in my daily life i would hardly have any trash at all. almost everything i am able to reuse, and i buy with re-usability in mind. this is not something i learned in school, or from somehow environmentally conscious parents. i am actually not sure where this came from. we did it out of habit. waste not, want not. maybe it came from not being able to afford to keep buying new stuff. it wasn't really conscious. reusing vs throwing away is more likely split along rich vs poor. and on the past more people were not rich. they were not necessarily poor in the sense of struggling to survive but the average population created everything they needed for themselves or bartered it. there was no space for trash. buying new things is a sign of wealth. this is especially visible in china where second hand markets are practically non-existent. people pride themselves that they can afford to buy new stuff. note that reusing is different from recycling. reusing happens at home or on the second hand market. recycling comes from collecting trash and transforming it. so in that sense recycling is very new. but reusing is old.
- em-bee 7y ago
  in the past, the only form of trash was compost. and even that was (re)used.
  - charles_f 7y ago
    Hmm I'm pretty sure these forks and vampire hunting crossbows from then were coming in their plastic wrappers. Else, not sure how they'd handle container shipping without breaking the merchandise.
nordsieck 7y ago
> Throwing stuff away was the normal way of life before modern civilization arrived What? Absolutely not. Things were precious and labor was cheap back in the day. Anything that could be repaired was. Ever heard of "darning socks"? Yeah - no one would do that today, but it was common 100 years ago. > just like defecating wherever you find convenient Lol. People found out pretty quickly that you have to give a crap about where you give a crap or people get sick and die. This is 2000 BC social technology. > The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away" stuff we don't need. BS. The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough for anything we will make in the next 100 years with space left over. We don't do this because it's cheaper to have small landfills closer to cities, but that's an economic limitation, not a technical one.
- yongjik 7y ago
  > The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. The wonder (and horror) of modern civilization is that this kind of thinking is obsolete. Pregnant women are advised not to eat tuna, caught anywhere, because we managed to pollute the entire ocean with mercury. We're producing so much chemical fertilizers that we create more biologically available nitrogen than the rest of nature combined. And of course we're warming the planet itself. Even ancient Americans, with their stone tools, managed to exterminate virtually every large animal in the Americas. > Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough ... Conceptually it's also trivial to stop global warming. We just have to stop making any more CO2 (and maybe suck up a bit from the air). Doesn't mean it's easy in practice.
  - lenkite 7y ago
    Unfortunately just stopping will not be good enough. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html
- rocgf 7y ago
  > The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. The earth is big from the perspective of one human, but we are 8 billion. The earth used to be stupendously big, but it is not anymore.

benj111 7y ago

"The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away"" By the same token, it gave us the power to produce so much stuff that we can afford to throw stuff away. Who darns socks anymore? Or has their tv repaired? Your average family of 100 years ago was throwing away ashes and what? The rag and bone man collected rags and bones, veg peelings would have gone to a chicken/pig/compost. Paper probably went in the fire. Plastic was none existent, metal? (rag and bone man? I'm guessing there was a market for it somewhere). This was the situation in the UK at least.

DocTomoe 7y ago
> Who darns socks anymore? Or has their tv repaired? I have done both in the last two years. I also do not send my brand-new car to the junkyard once the ashtray is full. It's wasteful.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Wait, new cars still have ashtrays?
- benj111 7y ago
  My grandmother darns her socks too. It isn't the 'normal' thing though, certainly not for younger generations. What were the economics of your tv repair, what was the cost of the repair v replacement and how old was the tv? Last time I looked into it, they were doubtful they could get the parts, and the likely charge was higher than replacing the tv. The same isnt true for emptying the ashtray. In fact I don't even need to take the car to the garage to empty the ashtray, I can do it myself!

daxfohl 7y ago

Even in old times it may be less true than you'd think. I was recently reading one of the Little House books to my kid and there's few sentences in there in their move to the west, how Ma cleaned up their lunch scraps and packing them along when on the pioneer trail in the middle of otherwise nowhere in their journey across the Dakotas.

bdamm 7y ago
Food for the chickens, perhaps?
- em-bee 7y ago
  those people were moving to the west in search for a place to live. they moved because they couldn't live where they were. if they could afford to throw stuff away they probably would not have moved in the first place
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    To outfit a wagon to go West with all the supplies necessary cost the inflation adjusted equivalent of about $100K. Wagons, livestock, supplies to live on while travelling and when homesteading before the first harvest came in were not cheap. That’s without considering the materiel you’d need to set up a farm when you got to your homestead. North America was labour scarce compared to Europe from 1492 on. There was always a place to live and work to do for the able bodied who were willing to work. That’s why millions traveled from Europe to save large sums of money before going home to buy a farm or send for their families from home. People did not go West because they had no place to live.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      i mean live on their own land and have their own farm instead of being a laborer depending on a salary. and since it was expensive many put all they had into that and could not afford to waste any of it.

Smoosh 7y ago

The tragedy of it is that we are technologically better placed than ever to make and mend items which will last a lifetime, and beyond, but consumerism and never-ending economic growth mean that instead we have planned obsolescence, and almost everything made as cheaply as possible, with consequent reduction in quality and less satisfaction overall.

xyzzyz 7y ago
Most garbage is not obsolete or broken equipment. Most garbage is packaging (cardboard shipping boxes, plastic yoghurt cups etc), which nobody wants or needs to last for a lifetime.

Liron 7y ago

I meant the convenience of tossing something away and having it go somewhere properly out of the way. You mention "defecating wherever you find convenient" - yes, another pleasure of modern life is that at any time I can walk to a nearby bathroom and defecate, and do so on top of much more sanitary infrastructure than we ever had in the past.

em-bee 7y ago

uhm no. i'd like to see some evidence to that. most of what we throw away is packaging. in the past there was little packaging. and most packaging was reusable, a cloth, a bag or a chest for example. if it wasn't for packaging, in my daily life i would hardly have any trash at all. almost everything i am able to reuse, and i buy with re-usability in mind. this is not something i learned in school, or from somehow environmentally conscious parents. i am actually not sure where this came from. we did it out of habit. waste not, want not. maybe it came from not being able to afford to keep buying new stuff. it wasn't really conscious. reusing vs throwing away is more likely split along rich vs poor. and on the past more people were not rich. they were not necessarily poor in the sense of struggling to survive but the average population created everything they needed for themselves or bartered it. there was no space for trash. buying new things is a sign of wealth. this is especially visible in china where second hand markets are practically non-existent. people pride themselves that they can afford to buy new stuff. note that reusing is different from recycling. reusing happens at home or on the second hand market. recycling comes from collecting trash and transforming it. so in that sense recycling is very new. but reusing is old.

em-bee 7y ago
in the past, the only form of trash was compost. and even that was (re)used.
- charles_f 7y ago
  Hmm I'm pretty sure these forks and vampire hunting crossbows from then were coming in their plastic wrappers. Else, not sure how they'd handle container shipping without breaking the merchandise.

nordsieck 7y ago

> Throwing stuff away was the normal way of life before modern civilization arrived What? Absolutely not. Things were precious and labor was cheap back in the day. Anything that could be repaired was. Ever heard of "darning socks"? Yeah - no one would do that today, but it was common 100 years ago. > just like defecating wherever you find convenient Lol. People found out pretty quickly that you have to give a crap about where you give a crap or people get sick and die. This is 2000 BC social technology. > The wonder of modern civilization gave us so much power to produce stuff that it's no longer feasible to just "throw away" stuff we don't need. BS. The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough for anything we will make in the next 100 years with space left over. We don't do this because it's cheaper to have small landfills closer to cities, but that's an economic limitation, not a technical one.

yongjik 7y ago
> The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. The wonder (and horror) of modern civilization is that this kind of thinking is obsolete. Pregnant women are advised not to eat tuna, caught anywhere, because we managed to pollute the entire ocean with mercury. We're producing so much chemical fertilizers that we create more biologically available nitrogen than the rest of nature combined. And of course we're warming the planet itself. Even ancient Americans, with their stone tools, managed to exterminate virtually every large animal in the Americas. > Conceptually it's trivial to make a landfill large enough ... Conceptually it's also trivial to stop global warming. We just have to stop making any more CO2 (and maybe suck up a bit from the air). Doesn't mean it's easy in practice.
- lenkite 7y ago
  Unfortunately just stopping will not be good enough. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html https://phys.org/news/2017-10-global-doesnt-emissions.html
rocgf 7y ago
> The earth is big. Really big. Stupendously big. The earth is big from the perspective of one human, but we are 8 billion. The earth used to be stupendously big, but it is not anymore.