Throw away society

[jman]

parts I assume you do a lot of dumpster diving?

[Parts]

parts I assume you do a lot of dumpster diving?

Yes it runs in the family.  I do it for fun and profit

[maldoror]

Dude I feel the same way. But the idea of conservation has always been caught in a cultural whirlpool. Even at University, which is supposed to be so fucking progressive and everybody gives lip service to shit like this, nobody cares. People drink bottled water, buy a new laptop every six months, buy a new iPod every six weeks... Fuck.

[Parts]

Dude I feel the same way. But the idea of conservation has always been caught in a cultural whirlpool. Even at University, which is supposed to be so fucking progressive and everybody gives lip service to shit like this, nobody cares. People drink bottled water, buy a new laptop every six months, buy a new iPod every six weeks... Fuck.

Not to mention how they have new editions of the text book all the time so you can't get them used so easy and the book store won't give you shit for them at the end of the year.

This is one of my obsessions and the way I make my living.  I specialize in energy conservation as my main job the other is selling stuff I find or buy at estate and yard after I fix it up some.

[maldoror]

Dude I feel the same way. But the idea of conservation has always been caught in a cultural whirlpool. Even at University, which is supposed to be so fucking progressive and everybody gives lip service to shit like this, nobody cares. People drink bottled water, buy a new laptop every six months, buy a new iPod every six weeks... Fuck.

Not to mention how they have new editions of the text book all the time so you can't get them used so easy and the book store won't give you shit for them at the end of the year.

This is one of my obsessions and the way I make my living.  I specialize in energy conservation as my main job the other is selling stuff I find or buy at estate and yard after I fix it up some.

 

I can't believe I forgot to add that. They charge $150 on average new, $80-100 used, and you're usually lucky to get $30 back. And the whole thing is supposedly "not for profit." And if you hold on the them too long to shop around for a better price, whoops! they came out with the new edition where page 17 and 24 switched places and now you're lucky to get 5 cents for it. No, fuck that. You're lucky if you can find someone to give the fucking textbooks to. I have about three still hanging around that the store that sold them to me refused to take back, one semester after I bought them.

But hey, man, shrug it off. Life goes on. It's just the way things are. Funny how that excuse works for everything.

[Parts]

They charge $150 on average new, $80-100 used, and you're usually lucky to get $30 back.

Wow I went to school a long time ago they were only 40-60.  I thought it was bad when I paid $60 for a spiral bound one

[Calandale]

Call me pragmatic but I figure the faster we use up resources on Earth, the more incentive we'll have to develop better space travel.

Kinda throwing the dice though.
Might not be possible, if we use
up too much.

[Natalia Evans]

parts I assume you do a lot of dumpster diving?

Yes it runs in the family.  I do it for fun and profit

Fixing things runs in your family?


Are they autistic too or NTs who like to fix stuff or doing dumpster driving?

[Calandale]

Garbage picking and pack ratting seems
to run in my dad's side of the family too.

Big bonus if you actually fix things though.

[purposefulinsanity]

It irritates me that things are manufactured deliberately to not to last all that long and so that its cheaper to buy new than pay to get something repaired.  Huge amounts of packaging on stuff annoys me, as does the fact that people think its too much effort to wash out a can/bottle/etc and recycle it when they can just drop it in the bin instead.   I also get annoyed with charity shops who over-price things- I've seen them charge more for second hand kids' clothing than it would have cost new- it hardly encourages people to buy second hand stuff.

[Callaway]

I fix anything that can reasonably be fixed.  Once I fixed a VCR by using superglue to repair a large rubber band that had broken.

Unfortunately, if I can't fix it myself, it often costs more for me to have it professionally repaired than to just buy a new one.  That happened with my daughter's small TV/VCR when the VCR broke and also with a battery pack for her DVD player that we use in the bus for her long rides to and from school.

Her play fort is made primarily of dumpster dived redwood.  This place that makes "play systems" for children was throwing out perfectly good scraps of redwood as well as nuts and bolts and other useful things.  We even found her play fort ladder in their dumpster.  My husband made a hexagonal design that utilized the shorter pieces of redwood we had, then he made an octagonal picnic table to use the scraps of wood left over from building her play fort.

 

[Parts]

parts I assume you do a lot of dumpster diving?

Yes it runs in the family.  I do it for fun and profit

Fixing things runs in your family?


Are they autistic too or NTs who like to fix stuff or doing dumpster driving?

My family is full of people who if they aren't are very close I am one of the only one's who actually believe in ASD  .  Most including my parents ,even in their 70's, dumpster dive and fix things my brothers and I more than most.  We would do very well on a show like Junkyard Wars 

[Parts]

I fix anything that can reasonably be fixed.  Once I fixed a VCR by using superglue to repair a large rubber band that had broken.

Unfortunately, if I can't fix it myself, it often costs more for me to have it professionally repaired than to just buy a new one.  That happened with my daughter's small TV/VCR when the VCR broke and also with a battery pack for her DVD player that we use in the bus for her long rides to and from school.

Her play fort is made primarily of dumpster dived redwood.  This place that makes "play systems" for children was throwing out perfectly good scraps of redwood as well as nuts and bolts and other useful things.  We even found her play fort ladder in their dumpster.  My husband made a hexagonal design that utilized the shorter pieces of redwood we had, then he made an octagonal picnic table to use the scraps of wood left over from building her play fort.

 

My brother redid one of his bathrooms with scrap wood from pallets which is mostly oak which if you pick the nice pieces cleans up nice.  He made the cabinets and wainscoting  out of that and used an antique marble sink he had scavenged it looked nice.

[SovaNu]

the sun is a power source. we will use it.

[Callaway]

the sun is a power source. we will use it.

I made a model (doll) house that was heated with solar energy for a science fair project when I was a kid.  It won first place.

I couldn't find any good books about solar energy in my school library or my local library, so I wrote my Senator and asked him if he could go look for books about solar energy in the Library of Congress for me, because I had heard that it had a copy of every book ever written and I knew that he could check out books from it.  He sent me copies of two books about solar energy that he said I could keep and within a couple of years, my local library was greatly expanded.  My husband thinks that maybe the Senator had something to do with it.