We seem to live in such a disposable society.
When we got our current computer at home some years back we got a scanner and a printer to go with it. The printer worked well for quite some time but developed a couple of minor issues more recently. Nothing we couldn’t work around but annoying at times.
The scanner’s still OK but it can be a little noisy and occasionally temperamental.
We recently ran out of coloured ink for the printer and so Pauline was looking to get a replacement cartridge. The strange thing was she found that with a current cash back offer, it would be cheaper to buy a brand new combined printer and scanner unit complete with ink than to buy a colour cartridge for our old printer.
So the choice was between buying a colour cartridge for a printer that doesn’t work as well as it could and spending less money to replace both the printer and scanner with a brand new unit.
I suppose you know which option we took.
It really doesn’t make any sense does it? The new unit has the advantage of newer technology and it certainly takes up less space than the two previous units.
So many devices these days have dropped in price so much that it’s cheaper to replace items than to have a technician fix even the simplest of faults.
Have you found similar circumstances? Is it a good thing? What are the downsides to our throw away mentality?
By the way, we will be finding a new home for the old items so that they don’t end up clogging up landfill sites.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
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Hi Rodney,
You might try giving that stuff away through FreeCycle.
http://www.freecycle.org/
Thanks Clint.
We’ve used Freecycle a fair bit over the past year or so and I’d certainly recommend it to anyone who needs to give items away or who is interested in picking up some free items in their area.
Guess who bought a printer scanner last month? Good news is that this one seems to cost less to feed.
I remember back in the late fifties when they introduced Bik Biros that you threw away when they ran out of ink! Unheard of! Other ball point pens used to take a 1/6 refill – one shilling and sixpence… or 15 c. The expensive Bik cost 2/- (two bob!) I remember finding it hard to just throw it away. That’s not how I was brought up!
I still haven’t thrown away the MONGOOSE that I rode across from Perth to Sydney. It’s still my #1 bike!
Hi Rodney,
Love the blog, saw you first at Community of Blogger.
The subject of unnecessary waste is massive in the UK at the moment; we’ve been dubbed, not unreasonably, the dustbin of Europe. The newspaper The Independent is waging war on the superfluous packaging created by supermarket shopping, the stats are horrendous.Go to
http://www.independent.co.uk/
for the full story.
I hope Australia don’t make the mistake that we in the UK seem to have done: assuming that so long as there is land to bury it we can hide the problem underground.
Incidentally I read your post about Australia Day with interest, there has been coverage over here about the anxieties of right-wing politics and nationalism taking over the celebration. My blog today features a UK celebration, ooops I should say Scottish celebration: Burns Night.
Razors and Razor blades. The classic example.
The market around printers is based on you not considering throwing your printer away. They make a loss on the printer, and make it back on the ink.
For several years now it has been cheaper to buy new (entry level) inkjet printers than buy the refill ink for them – meaning it works out cheaper to bin your printer every time you run out of ink.
It is pretty despicable.
You can of course avoid the entire issue by sending photos to snapfish (or somebody similar), and avoiding printing things out unless you really need to.
My parents were raised during the depression so I was taught not to waste anything. I have had to replace things (toaster, microwave, etc) simply because I couldn’t find anyone willing to repair them! Hopefully you can find someone to pass the old items to rather than add them to the garbage bin.
One thing though is there is less ink in the cartridges that come with a new printer, than if you bought a new cartridge. So the prints actually might turn out more expensive per print that way.
For printing photos, I burn them to CD and take them to BigW. Quite often they have a 15c per print special, or if not it only costs 25c per print, quite a bit cheaper than printing at home.
We certainly won’t be printing out many photos. We do the same as you. We use a re-writable CD to take our photos to get printed on proper photographic paper. The big problem for many who print at home is that the prints are likely to fade in years to come.
It’s cheaper and better to get photos printed at a lab of some kind.
I’m wondering if there is any organization that you can donate the old items to? Like groups that help homeless get back into society and the like. Or companies that specialize in the recycling of computers and printers? We definitely live in a disposable world. It is sad.