As the middle-class daughter of a refugee mother and a Depression-era father, I grew up straddling two worlds. My parents could afford much more than they were willing to buy. Most things that broke could be and were repaired. My German grandmother’s aphorisms lingered in the air: “Waste not, want not,” “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “A stitch in… return to article
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Reader Comments (2)Page 1 of 1 pagesExcellent article and great reference to a favorite site, thestoryofstuff.com. But I have to take issue with one comment: comforters filled with down should no longer be made. As described in the Story of Stuff, the process of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal applies to animal products as well as consumer goods. But with animal products, there is one very important distinction: the animals are sentient, unlike ore or petroleum taken from the ground.
In a period of fifteen years, the Japanese slaughtered five million birds—mostly albatrosses—for headdresses of Europeans and Americans and down for pillows and comforters. Five million birds who knew nothing of the dangers of man, who stood by their eggs until they were grabbed by the neck and put into bags or slaughtered on the spot.
While I’m no fan of DuPont or Dow Chemical, I’m glad to have a 20-year-old fiber filled sleeping bag that I’ve used for two kayaking trips above the Arctic Circle.
Posted by nyvegan on Oct 22, 2009 at 8:09 PM In the 1970 I visited the Soviet Union with my father who had a keen interest in consumer products. This was a period when Soviet consumer goods where considered a joke. We spent a lot of time in stores checking out the wares. We noticed that small appliances like toasters where much more expensive than in the U.S. They also seemed overbuilt. Toasters with actual screws that you could take apart. Then we noticed all these kiosks and small shops called Metal Repair Shops. Turns out a toaster was not a disposable item there. If if broke you took it to the Metal Repair Shops to get it fixed. They had parts and replacement cords for all kinds of things. They even fixed my father’s umbrella which he had brought from the U. S. When we returned people made fun of me for singing the praise of Russian Toasters.
Posted by Gordon Quinn on Oct 27, 2009 at 7:10 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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