The End of the Throwaway Society

EDITORIAL_I remember sitting on my knees on a park picnic table as a young child, eating lunch off of little red hard plastic trays with dividers to separate the peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich from the treats. Being a pre-kindergartner, I had no idea what happened to the little red trays after I ran from the table to the playground, but I do remember when disposable paper plates the world and the red trays were no longer used.

Don’t want to wash something? Throw it away. Don’t want to maintain something? Throw it away. Before long everything seemed to go that course. The Throwaway Society was born—and a whole new perspective on the value of durable goods was born with it.

Electronics and furniture became cheaper to replace than to repair. Eventually, it seemed, there was no point in buying a durable anything, because when it broke, you’d just buy a new one and throw the old one away. No worries.

For manufacturers, the phenomenon was the same, but in reverse. Why manufacture a durable product when your competitors would make a shoddy one that sold just as readily? Planned obsolescence reared its ugly head.

The concept of disposability became pervasive. Even income became “disposable.”

Waste Not, Want Not

My dad is 84 years old. He is, as he says, “A child of the Great Depression.” I’ve seen him pound old nails out of a piece of wood rather than throw it away and buy a new piece of lumber; rewire an electric cord with a new connection; repair a lawn mower again and again with a trip to the hardware store for replacement parts and little know-how.

“When you grow up without, you learn to not waste anything,” he’d say, with a raise of his eyebrow, a tilt of his head, and a reproving look. Waste not, want not. Penny saved, penny earned.

Those of us fortunate enough to be born into post-Depression generations decided we were smarter, hipper, busier. We’d knowingly chuckle at the foolishness of “fixers” like my dad, certain that they were hopelessly old-fashioned and we were enlightened. We were smug, even a little haughty, about our modern, carefree lifestyle.

That is, until our trash accumulated, and it became apparent that the Throwaway Society’s disposable habits had caught up with us.

No Room at the Inn for the Garbage Barge

In March 1987 a story surfaced about Mobro, a barge hauling 3,000 tons of trash from Islip, N.Y. that traveled more than 5,000 miles—as far as Belize—in search of a home. It was denied offloading in five states and two foreign countries.

“The Mobro became a national symbol of the country’s worsening problem with solid-waste management and disposal,” wrote Philip Gutis of The New York Times.

The Throwaway Society lifestyle, it seems, came with a hefty price—both fiscally and environmentally. Toxins were finding their way into the water table and causing health problems. Removal of the toxins and dealing with brown sites were costly.

Cradle to Grave

Today ecosavvy manufacturers are reducing, reusing, recycling waste—effectively and profitably. The Throwaway Society is so yesteryear.

Manufacturers are taking a long-range view of the entire life cycle of a product—from cradle to grave—designing the products with their eventual end life and dismantling in mind, along with how the materials can be  reused and recycled at the end of their usable lives.

Our cover story, “Injection molder slashes parts costs using recycled plastics,” highlights the lean, green efforts of three smart partners in AGS Technology, who found a way to compete in the hyper-competitive plastic injection molding market by lowering their raw material costs, and therefore the products they produce—using and processing recycled plastic.

AGS Technology President Chris Racelis walked me through the company’s facility, from raw material cleaning and processing through some serious sampling and testing procedures and on to the plastic injection molding of durable goods and components. Even those little red hard plastic picnic trays can be recycled and made into a component at AGS.

In the hierarchy of the sustainability mantra “Reduce, reuse, recycle,” reusing is preferable to recycling. But it’s unlikely that everything produced can be reused as is. Breaking products down into their raw materials for recycling re-establishes, even reinflates, value back into manufactured goods.

Recycling has changed the whole disposability perspective. If a product’s material bill of goods has value, the product has more value.

Waste not, want not. Thousands saved, thousands pocketed.