Are dumpster divers really society's catfish?

The next time you're looking at an aquarium, take a look at what's sucking up the slime on the aquarium floor. Chances are you'll see a catfish. Solitary and homely, catfish are all too happy to hoover up the filth that falls beneath all the beautiful fish.

Maybe catfish and dumpster divers serve the same kind of purpose.

People are lazy. We're happy to recycle as long as we have blue bins placed at our doors. We seperate plastics from glass and cardboard from newspaper. We rinse out tin cans and milk cartons. We do these chores mainly because the bins are left behind if it's not done right. Surprisingly, recyclables still end up going out with regular garbage. Even return-for-deposits like juice boxes, water bottles, pop cans--these things also make their way into Smithrites. This is where society's catfish come in.

Dumpster divers feed on our laziness. They dig into our stinking garbage because we throw away good money. On any given day, divers know there's plenty of return-for-deposits thrown out with the trash. They also know there's brand new shoes, unused household items, and working appliances hidden inside garbage bags. They know these things about us because they are us--we can't hide from them. Dumpster divers not only make a few bucks off of our waste, but also rescue our landfills from being overrun with recyclable goods that would otherwise sit in plastic pergutory.

What I learned: Maybe I've been judging dumpster divers too harshly. By merit of what they do for society, divers could even be acknowledged as a form of waste managment. Of course there's rotton apples in any barrel, and not all divers are working in society's best interest. However, many divers are interested in simply living off the spoils of other people' s "garbage." These divers will contuniue to thrive until we learn to flip our own reusables. But for now, as long as divers leave their goldmines as tidy as they found them, I say our tank can use the catfish.*

* This blog post is dedicated to catfish and divers everywhere. I would also like to acknowledge my inspiration for this post: an unnamed catfish that lives in the aquarium at ABC Restaurant on Lougheed Hwy, Coquitlam.

Fashion is so old-fashioned

I've been reading a book called "Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America" by Giles Slade (2006, Harvard University Press.) In this book the author talks about, among other things, the meaning of fashion in the business world.

Fashion is a word that was used in the industrial revolution by businesspeople as the idea of encouraging people to buy new stuff before their perfectly good old stuff wore out. Before the industrial revolution the concept of fashion in business didn't really exist because people demanded function first. There was no place for frills or frivolity.

The business community wanted to change that.

In his book, Giles explains that the industrial revolution created an overall product surplus -- lots of products, not enough purchasers. Ford's Model T became arguably the first victim of fashion. Why? In a nutshell, Ford's competitors realized that if they could come up with a product that looked more "fashion-forward," they could market to consumers looking for an alternative to the cookie-cutter Ford product. It's not because their Model T cars weren't functioning -- on the contrary, the Model T was very well-made -- but poor Tin Lizzie was ugly. New, prettier cars created by GM made the Model T unfashionable, and soon after that, obsolete.

Why should we care? Because, if we fast-forward to today, big businesses are using the same manipulative concepts on us. If a company makes products that become obsolete before they break, they will gain a constant flow of repeat consumers. (The challenge for these businesses is to retain consumers through marketing and brand loyalty. But that's another post.) Or, if a business creates a product designed to physically break, this is considered even better. Take light bulbs for example:

IT'S TRUE -- Did you know there is a light bulb in the US that has been burning for more than 100 years? You probably didn't, and that's just the way big industry likes it. The light bulbs you and I buy in Zellers are made to break. If our bulbs took over a century to burn out, we wouldn't need a constant stream of new bulbs. If we didn't need a constant stream of new bulbs, big business wouldn't get our money. The actual business term for this concept is "planned obsolescence."

To see the Livermore Centennial Light for yourself goto the "bulbcam" at http://www.centennialbulb.org/

Planned obsolescence creates an ideal society for big business; a society where people continuously buy, buy, buy. When businesses create products that aren't meant to last, this ensures the consumer (you and me) will be buying the same product from them again soon. And when planned obsolescence fails (meaning the product is well-built and outlives it's targeted date of self-destruction,) fashion will kick in to make the product outdated and undesirable.

A fashion concept is required to create a wasteful, throwaway society. The concepts of fashion and planned obsolescence walk hand-in-hand down the same garbage-strewn path.

What I learned: I like the idea of personal style and expression. What I don't like is the idea of fashion greedily engineered by big business. Maybe we can all try to make informed product purchases and try not to fall prey to engineered fashion. I wonder: is it possible to make this concept of enginered fashion unfashionable?

Gather ye ink cartridges while ye may

On Sunday my home printer ran out of ink. I had a project due on Monday. I could have bought more ink, but I bought sushi instead. I thought I’d come to school early on Monday morning, when I'd have plenty of time to print my project on the DC workroom printer.

So yesterday I arrived at school, went to the workroom, and plugged in my flash drive. I opened my project, saved it to desktop, clicked the print icon, and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

First I checked the printer to make sure there were no flashing red lights or paper jams. It looked okay to me. Then I checked the printer tray to make sure my paper didn’t quietly pop out without the machine making its usual whirring sounds -- nope. I hit the print button again. And again. Still no whirring sounds. I walked over to the IT call phone to ask if there was a problem with the printer. The tech guy told me yes, in fact, the network is unusually slow and printing is taking forever all over the campus.

Oh, did I mention I had my cranky five-year-old son with me?

Because my little guy was with me, the only reason I came to the college was to quickly print my project , hand it in, and leave. Now I was stuck waiting for my paper to slowly snake its way through the campus print cue, to print at some unknown time in the future. I stared at the printer, thinking of the cliche "a watched pot never boils."

Finally, the printer jumped to life. My classmate's stuff printed first. That figures.

Silence again. Other classmates began filing out the door, heading over to class. (Come on, Come on, PRINT!!) The printer hummed again. And finally, there it was! My project dropped, page by page, into the printer's tray.

Even though I got to school an hour before the project was due, I found myself shuffling papers and scrambling to organise my project minutes before the deadline.

What I learned: don’t buy sushi with your ink jet money.