The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [134]
There are signs that repairs will make a comeback in the United States. The economic meltdown in 2008 coincided with the first increase in consumer electronics service centers in fourteen years, and the first increase in appliance service centers since 2002, according to the Professional Service Association, which collects yearly data on appliance and consumer electronics service centers.28 Shoe repair shops are also experiencing a boom after a long decline. During the Great Depression, there were about 120,000 shoe repair shops in the United States. Today there are only 7,00029; however, many of these are reporting a 50 percent increase in business since the economic meltdown started in 2008. In 2009, Rhonda Jensen, owner of Reuter’s shoe repair shop in Topeka, Kansas, reported an increase from about thirty-five repairs each day to fifty. “When the economy gets bad, people get their shoes fixed, so we’re seeing a great influx of people. Maybe rather than throwing that shoe away they get it fixed.”30
Packaging
The largest and perhaps most annoying category of products we’re wasting in the United States is containers and packaging. Maybe you’re even surprised that this Stuff fits under the header of “products,” but it does, because it was designed by someone and produced for this purpose. You may not be going out of your way to buy it (what you generally want is the peanut butter inside the jar, or the MP3 player, not its plastic case, or the shaving foam, not its metal canister), but companies designed and produced it because they thought it would entice us—sometimes overtly, sometimes subliminally—to buy whatever is inside. Of course in the case of some foods or delicate items, packaging plays a role in keeping it fresh or intact, but even then, attracting potential customers is still a primary goal of packaging designers.
In The Waste Makers, Vance Packard cites some marketing psychologists justifying a belt sold inside packaging: “ ‘normally a woman will not be attracted by a belt hanging from a rack... It is limp, unstimulating, and undesirable. To the normal, healthy, energetic woman a hanging belt is not a symbol of virility or quality. It cannot possibly be associated with her man’... On the other hand, ‘a belt that is encased in a psychologically potent package’ has favorable symbolism and ‘is naturally assigned the role of symbolizing respect, affection, and even great love.’”31
Particularly pernicious examples of packaging are the flimsy plastic bags given out by stores in which to carry Stuff home, and single-serving bever age containers. With the former, government regulation is increasing: in San Francisco, Los Angeles, China, and South Africa there are outright bans—at least on the thinnest, least durable bags—and in Ireland, Italy, Belgium, and Taiwan, there’s a tax on plastic bags.32 Within six months of the Irish tax on plastic bags in 2002, their use declined by 90 percent. The BBC reported that in the three months after the ban was introduced, shops handed out just more than 23 million plastic bags—about 277 million fewer than normal.33
As for beverage containers, we have a ways to go. Each day in the United States, we use more than 150 billion single-use containers for beverages, plus another 320 million takeout cups.34 Disposable (or “one-way”) beverage bottles are a relatively new phenomenon in this country. For decades, we drank from refillable glass bottles, which were often washed and refilled locally, a process that conserved materials and energy and resulted in jobs. In 1960, one-way containers only accounted for