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A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next de
by dkga 1y ago
A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text.
First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination?
Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „gratis - zum mitnehmen“ (free to take with you) and people who want/need come and collect them. Only if anything is really unwanted, you take back and throw away.
Third, I was surprised the author felt bad. A sign that there is unfortunately some stigma in re-using things. She is actually doing very nice work by collecting them and trying to give them a new lease of life for herself or others (she mention she donated some of the items)
- thephyber 1y agoCollege students (undergrads) aren’t full adults yet. They are transitioning from living under the protection of their parents to living on their own. Throwing away things that could be sold could be a matter of (1) frustration/exhaustion with the end of the semester, (2) no place in their car / plane luggage for extra items, (3) indifference of kids who don’t know the value of a dollar (the Ballenciaga slides are literally the most expensive version of a slide you can buy — I usually get mine for less than $10). On the street might be a better solution, but in the US you can be fined for littering (“dumping”) if you abandon items on someone else’s property. Lots of local laws in the USA are designed to maintain high property values (while subsidizing the very expensive police departments).
- bawolff 1y ago> Throwing away things that could be sold could be a matter of (1) frustration/exhaustion with the end of the semester, (2) no place in their car / plane luggage for extra items, (3) indifference of kids who don’t know the value of a dollar (the Ballenciaga slides are literally the most expensive version of a slide you can buy — I usually get mine for less than $10). Or you know, them being rational actors who know spending an hour to sell something for $5 is not a good use of their time. The author did find a couple of allegedly more expensive items, but is also e.g. talking about used pyjama bottoms. How much money do you really think you are going to get for used pyjama bottoms? Is it worth it? Almost certainly no.
- disconcision 1y agoas a minor clarification balenciaga slides in good condition would probably be more like $100-250 used, though your point still holds
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- slibhb 1y ago> Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „gratis - zum mitnehmen“ (free to take with you) and people who want/need come and collect them. Only if anything is really unwanted, you take back and throw away. It's common in the US too.
- sokka_h2otribe 1y agoThe students live on campus, so the majority of folks are getting rid of items at the same time. Different than when people live in a city and not everyone is moving at once
- coderatlarge 1y agothis is how i furnished my grad school apartment way back when. fellow students helped carry furniture multiple blocks away.
- bluGill 1y agoEvery year my city does a clean up day - put anything on the curb and they will take it away (hazardous waste needs to go to a special collection location not the curb). All the scrappers know that day and will be driving around trying to beat the trash trucks to anything good and as a result most of the "trash" doesn't get to the dump. People do put things on the curb other times of the year, but a dedicated clean up day helps everyone - you know when it is your turn, and the scrappers don't waste gas driving down dead end streets.
- dylan604 1y agoMy city does this monthly in what is known as bulk trash day. This isn't an uncommon thing. There are people that know these schedules and drive around to collect things before the city arrives to collect. Acting like this is a new concept seems for someone seems very strange to me--however far up the thread this strangeness started
- amalcon 1y ago> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? It's very possible for the cost of transport to exceed the value of the goods, especially if one is flying to one's next destination. > Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This I can't help with. As far as I have seen, this is a common practice everywhere in the northeast US. The police don't always love it, but that doesn't really prevent people from doing it.
- dylan604 1y agoWho's your target audience for those items left on the curb? Everyone just left town.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agome! not everyone who lives in a college town goes to the college.
- baxtr 1y agoHow is this something the police are concerned with? I mean municipal authorities, maybe, but police? Wouldn’t be the case in most of Europe at least.
- akerl_ 1y agoIn most places just dumping stuff in space you don’t own isn’t allowed.
- jdminhbg 1y agoSomewhere there is a line between setting an unopened box of high-end sneakers on the street and putting a rusty mattress frame on the street, and dumping like the latter situation is illegal.
- neltnerb 1y agoIf you mean, why police would ever be involved, the answer is that there are a lot of police and not a lot of municipal workers walking around. The only way municipal workers would do anything here is if a resident of the area contacts them with 311 to inform them. And even then it can take months (if ever) if it's something like a blocked sidewalk or broken bollards rather than something important like a pothole. If you mean why would "authorities" care, there's a lot of people that put what amounts to trash on the sidewalk and then move to a new apartment without cleaning it up, or else just ignore that they left it in front of their house until "someone else" takes care of it.
- roadbuster 1y agoUndergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. It shouldn't come at any surprise that a lot of spoiled kids who are funded by the International Bank of Mommy & Daddy are apathetic and wasteful. From: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/duke-university https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit... "The median family income for a Duke student is $186,700. A significant portion of Duke students, 69%, come from families in the top 20% of earners, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Additionally, only 1.6% of students come from low-income backgrounds"
- bluGill 1y ago> Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. Does it? I don't know anything about Duke, but a lot of colleges I know of tell your tuition is around that price. However dig deeper and you discover it is almost impossible to not get scholarships thus making the real price cheaper. I know of one school near me that automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship, then they look at your background to figure out if you qualify for anything more.
- dylan604 1y agoThen why not just lower the tuition by 40%?
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoi wonder if universities can write off the "loss" of granting scholarships for inflated tuition rates? that said, scholarships come from all over, so if you're getting scholarships from outside the school itself, the school is getting all that money.
- sgerenser 1y agoNope theres no “write off”, universities generally aren’t for-profit and thus don’t pay income taxes. Even in the case of a for-profit enterprise, if a company foregoes income it’s just less income coming in, there’s no extra “write off” on top of (obviously) not paying taxes on the foregone income.
- MisterTea 1y agoThese are people far disconnected from reality and honestly dont give a damn about anything but projecting their wealth. Why else would they spend $400 on something as mundane as slippers? They are shallow and careless.
- arcanemachiner 1y agoThis is one possible hypothesis, yes.
- susiecambria 1y agoThe $395 Balenciaga slides really stood out to me, too.
- newccount 1y ago[flagged]
- monocasa 1y ago> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? At my wife's alma mater, the way move out in the dorms worked was that you had 24hrs after your last final and then had to be gone. That didn't really leave a lot of time for a lot of people that had maybe two checked bags and a carry on to work with, and had spent the previous time focused on studying for their finals.
- xhkkffbf 1y agoI realize that students don't think this way, but they could do a few things before the end of the semester. They usually find the time to get drunk or go to Starbucks for a hit of caffeine.
- nemomarx 1y agoStarbucks is a lot easier to swing by then trying to get boxes to haul things away. Also in my experience the dorms don't let you bring by rented trucks or vehicles in the loading zone unless it's your assigned move out time slot, so you can't really do that mid semester. you could carry things by hand slowly somewhere, but it's going to be much more cumbersome.
- monocasa 1y agoI mean, you're looking at almost a month out or so given the extra stress of the end of the semester with finals and projects. And the semester is only five months or so to being with. It's not really realistic to make this a moral issue, IMO.
- joezydeco 1y agoThey're also studying for finals and working on end-of-semester projects. And yeah, they're still kids and time management is a thing you learn at this age. But the last 3 weeks of a semester go by incredibly fast.
- atonse 1y agoSo the solution could be top down: - give 2-3 extra days for students to move out. - maybe partner with a few moving/freight companies? you’d bring them a lot of customers and they could provide a good rate.
- Suppafly 1y agoThis happens at every university on move out day, especially if they have a lot of international students that need to fly out of the country. >Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? Often they are, but most of the people already have their own stuff and limited space for additional stuff. When I lived in a dorm, anything larger items you didn't want you could put on the 3rd floor lounge area and the school would donate or dispose of them. Any other students were free to take that stuff, but unless you had preplanned to have a truck or uhaul, you could only take so much.
- ajb 1y agoYeah. Given that they all move out on the same day, the most economically efficient way is to organise the reuse collection centrally, as some unis mentioned in the article do. More generally, it's dumb that it's so much more work to give something away than to trash it - or even buy it in the first place. Our logistics for buying stuff is incredibly efficient, for reusing we're stuck in the 15th century - everything done artisanally (and with free guilt-labour)
- p3rls 1y agoThe stigma is more about going through peoples' trash and being poor than reusing things. Environmentalism/repurposing etc, as long as its cleanly done, can be pretty high status otherwise.
- stego-tech 1y ago> Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? Boston does this! The locals refer to it as “Allston Christmas”, it takes place every September 1st, and it’s a great time to scavenge furniture and appliances, even computers and electronics. My big concern remains bedbugs, personally. As a renter myself, I don’t have the facilities to disinfect and kill off any pests that might’ve hopped on between the old apartment and the curb, which narrows my selection considerably. Still, lots of students and locals partake in the yearly turnover tradition and walk away with new room furniture sets!
- micromacrofoot 1y agothis is also just where the trash goes for pickup though, and indeed they have extra garbage pickups on moving day
- DFHippie 1y agoThis is commonplace where I live in Vermont, to the point where sometimes things are taken which you didn't mean to give away. You put "free" on it -- or don't, see above -- put it by the curb, and it's gone within the hour. There are also plentiful thrift stores which take donations. The profound selfishness of throwing this stuff out rather than passing it on so eventually some person with less can have a better life -- the thrift stores generally are non-profits supporting the homeless, hospices, and so forth -- boggles my mind.
- creer 1y agoSo, it's surprising at first, but as others mention, it seems like a roughly functioning system: The students are rushed by the university to move, move, move. They do what they can which is not much for many, who don't yet have their life in order. Buying too much, too expensive, not downscaling in time, etc, why so surprising? Some universities have a decent system in place for temporarily holding that stuff for other students. For the rest, the locals - individuals and business can come and do the sorting. Same thing happens on Craigslist: You can post an item for sale for a fair price - and it may take days or weeks - or you can post it free and it will gone in hours (to someone who will resell it perhaps but whatever.)
- gosub100 1y ago> or you can post it free and it will gone in hours you'll have a dozen people immediately claim it and ask you to hold it for them, but actually getting rid of the item is another story. maybe 1/4 or less actually take it. I recommend donating to a thrift store (even one of the "evil" ones where the CEO makes $600k) or posting it in proper category, putting $1 for the price, and saying "free" in the item description. As opposed to using CL's "free" category.
- mr3martinis 1y agoMany apartment buildings have policies about where trash can be left, including at move out, otherwise there’s always trash around building entrances for the maintenance staff to clean up. Also, the Durham area is pretty suburban, so this apartment complex might not have much pedestrian traffic or even a sidewalk. It’s wasteful, but this is likely the situation.
- PunchyHamster 1y agoI've recently moved from apartment that I lived in for 10+ years. I can understand that. Going thru literally thousands of items (many hobbies, too small apartment in short) and deciding where to pack which and what to throw away is gruelling. If I had choice (I wanted to get deposit back and not leave a mess), I'd leave most of that after picking the most important items, as a lot of them can be replaced cheap for when (or if ever) I will need those items again. But > First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? that is just weird (unless food is something that would spoil in few days I guess)
- neom 1y agoThe missing part is... those are Valentino's, those are not "Tennis shoes". Now, why did someone throw out those Valentino's? Because nobody who goes to college and wears Valentino would wear those Valentino's, those particular Valentino's pictured, to someone who likes Valentino: are garbage. To your second point, why not give them to someone with less? I would suspect that a young person who is attending Duke University, one of the most exclusive universities in the world, wearing Valentino, a luxury brand that even people who love luxury brands laugh at, gives oh about...mmm.. zero shits for someone who has less than them. Third, you referenced a society that has a sense of egalitarianism, I'd hazard: that society is far removed from the above realities.
- gosub100 1y agousing stereotypes about the rich is about as ignorant as making them about the poor.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neom 1y agoIgnorant of what it's like to be poor, maybe. I don't believe my life experiences have resulted in me being ignorant to the rich, please buy some $DOCN.
- scotty79 1y ago
- bawolff 1y ago> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Because transport costs more than the item? Especially if you are travelling by plane. Sure there might be cheaper transport options but the opportunity cost of arranging them quickly dwarfs the value. > Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? If you are in a university setting where maybe 500 people are leaving all at the same time, i imagine university admin may not be thrilled at the prospect of cleaning up after this.
- directevolve 1y agoI live in Portland. Walk around certain neighborhoods, and you’ll see items out on the street - mostly garbage. Broken couches, broken tables, broken appliances, that sort of thing. Typically, items with remaining utility are exchanged via Goodwill or an online tool like Buy Nothing. My guess is that the college does not want to allow students to dump their mostly-garbage on the neighbors. At the same time, wealthy students who will throw out items of value may feel they have better things to do than separate out items to donate. That’s especially true if they wait until the last minute. Overall, separating items to donate from one’s trash is a way to avoid paying to dispose of trash at the dump and a way to perhaps be charitable or environmentally conscious. I’m not convinced it’s all that effective as an altruistic move. If the college sets up a place to dump for free, I’m not at all surprised many people take advantage of it without another thought.
- RajT88 1y agoI do not even live in Portland - I live on the edge of a suburban area where people skew pretty conservative. I see the same thing - people who want to get rid of perfectly good stuff, and do not want it to go to waste. Even I do this occasionally if I cannot be bothered to repair a thing - it goes out a bit before garbage day and is usually soon gone.* *Unless it is an old non-wide LCD monitor. Nobody wants those...
- paulcole 1y agoI live near Ladds Addition and the free piles are the worst. 90% of it is pure crap that just sits out for weeks. People put it out to feel good about themselves. Once I saw a bunch of random wires with a label, “FREE - great for art projects.” It’s like thanks for letting me know I was going to knock on doors until I found the right person to make an offer to.
- cgio 1y agoWhen I put out any electrical/electronic device here in Australia, the only thing that gets picked up, is the wires, snipped from the devices; I still don’t know why. Recycling would not make sense at this scale I think. And in the process, they destroy the device for anyone who might have a use for it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dzhiurgis 1y agoThose shoes wouldn't be accepted to any op shop for how badly scratched they are.
- tmpz22 1y agoI've seen this phenomena at two universities. Its gross, dystopian, and eye-opening... unless you're a student who just went through a bingeful finals week and now have to move at extremely short notice. 1) Usually because they can't take it with them. A lot of students fly home, some don't have drivers license, and/or the cost to ship it third party exceeds the price of the items. It's also laziness, but I pin it mainly on practicality and cost. 2) They do, and at Santa Barbara I saw groups gathering, knowing the move-out days, to pick it up. These were migrants, homeless, and thrifty individuals. A lot of the stuff is still in its original packaging, as the parents of the student bought well intentioned but impractical gifts that never even got opened. A lot of room for better organization, but mostly folks just don't care, they're so caught up with finals and getting home that it's very far back in the list of priorities. 3) Picking through trash is a uniquely de-humanizing experience. Its one of the few things that makes me stop walking even in high-homeless areas like the Tenderloin, because I can't even imagine what it feels like to be picking through trash for items to sell, or particularly foodstuffs.
- ghostly_s 1y ago> why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? Leaving it in the "trash" room is the equivalent of this in large apartment buildings ime. Note these reusable items were set aside, not tossed in the dumpster. I would agree the curb is better, where any passerby could take it, but in buildings large enough to have staff on-site that isn't tolerated because it would make the property "look bad."
- mynameisash 1y agoLots of responses to your first two points, and I immediately jumped to your last one: > Third, I was surprised the author felt bad. A sign that there is unfortunately some stigma in re-using things. Ever since my wife and I got married 20+ years ago, we've had a clothesline, and we are constantly line-drying our clothes, weather permitting. I've had plenty of weird looks and probably even a few comments. I definitely have had the impression that people look down on me for doing so, but weird stigma be damned.
- analog31 1y agoI live in Madison WI. Move-out weekend is called Hippie Christmas. Townspeople furnish their own apartments with stuff thrown out by the students. I visited a friend's apartment, and he described the decor as "a mixture of TarJay and Hippie Christmas." We also regularly leave stuff by the curb and it gets taken. Conveniently, you leave it out a day or two before trash day, and if it's not taken, then you can throw it in the trash.
- keeganpoppen 1y agopersonally, i am very not fond of the idea of leaving stuff on the street and then being like “meh not my problem anymore… someone will take it”… could very well be a cultural thing, but it feels very… i won’t fill out an adjective, because i don’t want to cast aspersions, and, besides, am fully open to being off base on this one. it just feels very “the ‘help’ / ‘poors’ will take it”… and for the record im not some sort of populist demagogue— quite the opposite: i was just simply raised with a “take care of your own shit” ethos. no value judgment here, and i understand the arguments contra-… or at least the first few that come to mind. what am i missing? i know this bothers many less than it does me.