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Maybe hoarding is one way some of us cope with the deep grief, collective guilt, and fear for the future, that many of us feel about the damage our civilisation has done - and continues to do - to the natural world. If so, I get it. I have to fight my inner hoarder every day. But it's a fight worth winning.
Because hoarding does not help the environment, or anyone. It just creates suffering, for you living in avoidable clutter, and for whoever has to deal with it after you.
Be honest with yourself, you'll probably never look at 5% of it ever again.
Maybe hoarding is one way some of us cope with the deep grief, collective guilt, and fear for the future, that many of us feel about the damage our civilisation has done - and continues to do - to the natural world. If so, I get it. I have to fight my inner hoarder every day. But it's a fight worth winning.
Because hoarding does not help the environment, or anyone. It just creates suffering, for you living in avoidable clutter, and for whoever has to deal with it after you.
One cause of the problems of post-consumer waste, is manufacturers intentionally making disposable items instead of durable ones ("planned obsolescence"). Amplified by forced trade rules that stop governments rejecting low quality imports, despite the fact they end up paying public money to manage all the waste created (or charging the public "user pays" fees). While manufacturers, importers and retailers all make bank.
(1/?)
One knock-on effect of this is weakening the incentive to pass durable items around. Why would you spend time sorting through mostly disposable old stuff to find them? When it's so cheap to buy something that seems like an adequate replacement.
I say seems because if you buy $30 shoes that last 3 months, you'll spend much more on shoes in the long run than if you buy a $200 pair that lasts 5 years.
(2/?)
Incidentally this is an example of why it's expensive to be poor. If you need shoes now, you can't afford to buy durable ones, and buying disposable ones takes all the money you might have saved towards them.
Also, you're less likely to have time and resources to salvage durable items from older family and friends as they pass on. Especially when they end up mixed in with mountains of disposable crap, and it's not always immediately obvious which is which.
(3/?)
This too could be funded out the money pooled from waste management levies, taken at time of import. Weighted according to a simple, evidence-based scale, which sets higher levies for items the harder they are to repair or recycle.
Imagine if waste management was funded not by council rates, but by a levy on all imports. With exemptions for items that can be demonstrated to be multi-generationally durable, highly repairable, home compostable, etc.
The primary benefit would be reducing the incentive to bring disposable items into the country. If the levy was passed on to customers, they wouldn't be so cheap compared to durable items. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be so profitable.
(4/?)
Imagine how much stuff we could keep out of landfill if there was a lot less non-compostable waste to deal with in the first place. Not to mention how much stuff we could reuse, and the materials we could recycle or recover, if we could pay people decent wages to sort stuff as it arrives at waste management stations. One in every neighborhood.
Or even pay for regular kerbside collection of unwanted but potentially useful items, and systems to redistribute them to those who can use them.
(5/?)
Just in case anyone needs to know, here is a handwritten chart of Wairarapa (Carterton) FM radio stations. Not sure when it was created. But most likely sometime in between 2024 and the turn of the millennium.
Bit of media history, but not important enough to stay out of the fire ; )
Potato crisps taste amazing with hummus and a slice of capsicum. Carrot sticks and microwaved kumara (sweet potato) are amazing too.
This couple also has another video about getting rid of almost everything that was helpful, so you might want to check it out: https://youtu.be/v-kCNCMvchc?si=bJjEdbFyZab9049p
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