Comments on: We Used To Recycle Everything; What Happened?

By: Make it and Mend it

Make it and Mend it — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:08:55 +0000

We have definitely become a society whose first instinct is to chuck away and buy new. This has happened in just a couple of generations as our parent or grandparents who lived through depression and the second world war were used to making do and mending things that broke. We need to regain that mentality and those skills.
As to recycling – that should be a last resort – reuse should be the first option. If you do recycle make sure you do it properly

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:38:11 +0000

Africa is a big place. Where I live there is a pretty good understanding of how the used clothing supply chain works. I was recently rifling through a bale of tee shirts that came from Northern California. Many of them were unused event related stuff. Volunteer shirts for the SF marathon. Shirts with silly team building slogans from Silicon Valley. The pub crawl shirts don’t sell that well in a Muslim country.

Oh, and here in a relatively well off African country, people throw away some of the used clothing that doesn’t sell.

By: design

design — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:59:06 +0000

I heard something a few weeks ago about how people in Africa call donated stuff “dead mans clothing” because they don’t understand throwing something away while it still has use. It makes you think.

By: Allie

Allie — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:59:20 +0000

Lydia – I have a Mason Pearson hairbrush that I’ve had since I was about 13 (and I’m 31 now). They are partially plastic, and they are pretty expensive (some are well over $100). I certainly didn’t pay that for mine. I’m guessing it was about $50 back then, but assuming that all MP hairbrushes will last at least as long as mine has (and it’s still in perfectly good shape), at $100, it averages to $5 per year, which I’d assume is a better cost per use than most hairbrushes.