Well as long as I'm bitching about high local taxes (see previous post), thereby confirming that I am officially a cranky old bastard at 32, well listen up, ya'here, and lemme tell ya 'bout the put'n'take... down at the local transfer station, there is a "put'n'take" area, where you can leave your used stuff that someone might need, and take stuff that someone might have left, assuming of course that you want a 1976 Emerson hi-fi with an 8-track player and cat-scratched brown speakers, because that is the only thing that people ever seem to leave. But anyway, I digress.
My town, let's call it Taxonbury, charges really high taxes, like 10 Mill points higher than any town around. The schools here are really great, but otherwise, the services are pretty dismal... think pay toilets at the town hall... Anyway, citizens need to pay to buy a pass to drop off your recyclables at the transfer station. With that pass you can also pay to drop off other non-recycleable stuff: old appliances, yard trimmings, etc. I swung through there the other day to drop off some corrugated cardboard recycling and a few other items for the put'n'take... and the Transfer Station attendant informs me that there is now a $5 fee to drop stuff at the put'n'take. That's right, sports fans, my town now charges to let you give things away for free.
Keep in mind that stuff rarely even reaches the ground, as there is a whole put'n'take army constantly loitering in the area, ready to leap across the retaining wall to grab that Jefferson Airplane poster and the olive green 1972 toaster oven right out of your hands before you even unload it...
So anyway, not being interested in paying to give my stuff away, I moved onto step 2: the yard sale. For those not familiar with the tradition, a yard sale is a process where you spend most of a weekend day attractively staging your belongings in your driveway so that people driving past can easily point and sneer at the junk you once wanted. A few people will stop by to give you a dollar or so for a $20 item, or maybe $10 for a brand new $100 item. At the end of an 8 hour day you will realize with dismay that you just gave away $500 worth of items for $17.25, still have 3 hours of clean-up left, and effectively would have been better off working in some Thailand sweatshop sewing swooshes onto $150 sneakers named after some douche who didn't finish high school.
After packing up all the junk again and crying myself to sleep, I awoke refreshed and ready for step 3: Freecycle. Freecycle is an online community designed to help people reuse things and keep stuff out of the landfill. In theory, it is brilliant, and in some cases, it works swell. In most cases, it works like this: Offer in Hartford: Half eaten corn muffin. Wrapper is mostly intact, but muffin must be picked up by 3:45PM... or Wanted in New Haven: 42" LCD Plasma HDTV, in very good to excellent condition. Must be in original packaging with instructions, and delivery must be available as I have no car right now, and my parakeet has terminal feather rot so I can't leave her side.
By posting my yardsale items in Freecycle, I hoped to help some people out, get rid of some stuff, and maybe even save myself a bit of work. I wrote up some descriptions, posted the items up for grabs, and immediately was flooded with responses and requests for certain items. I carefully responded to each and everyone, gave detailed directions to each person, and set the items at the curbside for convenient pickup. After the first day, none of the items were retrieved. I understand how busy life can be, so I gave everyone a second day. Still no pickups... so I emailed politely every last person.
I woke up the next morning hoping to find an email box full of courteous responses, but was greeted only with a few offers for new mortgages, random Facebook friend requests (apparently my picture looks hot, and lots of people want to meet me for discreet fun), and many offer for products to help enhance that certain part of the male anatomy.(I hope my new facebook friends don't find out about those emails...) Anyway, it was also pouring down rain by now, so I decided to let the stuff sit out for one more day. I returned home to find all my stuff still there, and I suspect some of my neighbors might have added new items to my soggy pile of unwanted treasures.
You know how the story ends... me, in the front yard, listening to my sweet new Emerson hig-fi, trying in vain to build a bonfire with a bunch of soggy crap. At least I have a half a corn muffin to munch on...
Seriously though, folks, that is not very good advice. As some of you know, I have been actively fighting to protect the environment since high school, through undergrad, through a Master's program, and through a bunch of years as an environmental scientist, and when it comes to reducing, reusing, and recycling old stuff, my best advice is this: be sure to use lots of gasoline and old tires to really get that bonfire going, and make sure it is plenty hot before you toss in the brand new 42" LCD Plasma HDTV... despite the amazing picture clarity, those things are full of nasty pollutants, and they can cause big environmental problems if your bonfire isn't hot enough.
After packing up all the junk again and crying myself to sleep, I awoke refreshed and ready for step 3: Freecycle. Freecycle is an online community designed to help people reuse things and keep stuff out of the landfill. In theory, it is brilliant, and in some cases, it works swell. In most cases, it works like this: Offer in Hartford: Half eaten corn muffin. Wrapper is mostly intact, but muffin must be picked up by 3:45PM... or Wanted in New Haven: 42" LCD Plasma HDTV, in very good to excellent condition. Must be in original packaging with instructions, and delivery must be available as I have no car right now, and my parakeet has terminal feather rot so I can't leave her side.
By posting my yardsale items in Freecycle, I hoped to help some people out, get rid of some stuff, and maybe even save myself a bit of work. I wrote up some descriptions, posted the items up for grabs, and immediately was flooded with responses and requests for certain items. I carefully responded to each and everyone, gave detailed directions to each person, and set the items at the curbside for convenient pickup. After the first day, none of the items were retrieved. I understand how busy life can be, so I gave everyone a second day. Still no pickups... so I emailed politely every last person.
I woke up the next morning hoping to find an email box full of courteous responses, but was greeted only with a few offers for new mortgages, random Facebook friend requests (apparently my picture looks hot, and lots of people want to meet me for discreet fun), and many offer for products to help enhance that certain part of the male anatomy.(I hope my new facebook friends don't find out about those emails...) Anyway, it was also pouring down rain by now, so I decided to let the stuff sit out for one more day. I returned home to find all my stuff still there, and I suspect some of my neighbors might have added new items to my soggy pile of unwanted treasures.
You know how the story ends... me, in the front yard, listening to my sweet new Emerson hig-fi, trying in vain to build a bonfire with a bunch of soggy crap. At least I have a half a corn muffin to munch on...
Seriously though, folks, that is not very good advice. As some of you know, I have been actively fighting to protect the environment since high school, through undergrad, through a Master's program, and through a bunch of years as an environmental scientist, and when it comes to reducing, reusing, and recycling old stuff, my best advice is this: be sure to use lots of gasoline and old tires to really get that bonfire going, and make sure it is plenty hot before you toss in the brand new 42" LCD Plasma HDTV... despite the amazing picture clarity, those things are full of nasty pollutants, and they can cause big environmental problems if your bonfire isn't hot enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment