All Those Useless Things We Bought During the Lockdown | Sustainability Thoughts
By: Andreu Marquès
Tags: Coronavirus, Sustainability, Covid 19, Electronics, Minimalism

Oops, we forgot about the environment, once again

A landfill with our things. Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels

These days we found ourselves exploring new ways of living our lives. In denser areas, where the lockdown is being more strict, people have come out with lots of imaginative solutions to spend the spare time. We are not socializing as we did before, we spend less time commuting to the workplace. We might have been the ones whose job have been affected, or else, we have become a lot more efficient, by avoiding unnecessary meetings or interruptions. Indeed, we do have more time.

Being aware of that extra time, past the personal state of exception, we enter the phase of wanting to take advantage of that moment. We want to do something, with that gifted time. “Every cloud has a silver lightning”, so let’s find it.

The spectrum is quite big, ranging from taking that course I never had time to do up to teaching my grandma how to play Netflix and video call her grandsons. I have seen live performances from a balcony –every saturday– with its faithful audience. I have seen movies projected onto a building wall. Some people show their pragmatism and got on with DIY, or polishing some details of their houses that would never have their moment in our busy lives. We subscribed to platforms offering audiobooks, maybe we engaged one of those free courses of the Harvard University. My mother did a lot of knitting, for example. We even found ourselves assisting live ioga sessions on Instagram, or writing sustainability posts in medium. Great! People is exploring new activities, opening new doors and widening their knowledge. This can only be good.

Oh wait, maybe we forgot something.

I recently read a note a supermarked posed on the network: “we ran out of bread maker machines, but we will soon have them back in stock”.

Bread maker machines. This kind of machines:

Bread maker

The supermarket next to my house –which has a home tools section– had run out of breadmakers. People bought all of them.

And not only that, but you would not find flour on the supermarkets. Out of stock. And no, this case cannot compare to the toilet paper mystery Will Oremus talked about in his post, in which he defends that we are using less toilet paper from the other places and that supply has to be covered by the supermarkets with home toilet paper. We don’t have a reason to spend more flour, at least more than normally.

People are making bread at their homes. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t believe there is nothing bad with making homemade bread. What is a bad sign is having such an uncommon and specific item gotten out of stock.

But nothing compares to the homemade bread.

Well, let me correct you there: the processed bread that we buy at the supermarket does may be different to a recently made bread. Do we really think we are doing the best bread with the beast flour available in our neighbour? I don’t feel capable of surpassing the bread made at the bakery I usually go.

But homemade bread is cheaper.

Really? Your time is your most valuable thing, we are not as resource efficient as a bakery is and the electricity spent cooking the piece will sure add up to your bill.

Ok. I got bored, I wanted to make bread.

Thank you! Again, I don’t believe there is nothing wrong with that. But I do believe we do have a problem with the lifespan of these breadmakers. What are you going to do with that machine once you don’t want to make more bread? What are you going to do with that machine once you get bored of getting bored? I’ll tell you: throw it away. It will probably transition to the terrace, or the garage, in order to grab some dust and, some time later, when you see the forgotten –and probably broken– machine, you will decide to send it to the landfill. Take that case as many times as bread makers were sold during the Covid crisis, and you have quite a volume of wasted machinery.

The same story happened with the fitness accessories and sport gear. We went mad. Stores ran out of everything: bike stands that allow you to pedal without moving, dumbbells, jumping ropes, matts, static bikes. What are we going to do with all that once we don’t need it anymore? Okay, the lockdown affected our plans to get ready for the summer, but there is a lot of home routines you can work on that leave you exhausted. The burpee was invented a long time ago, and there are lots of positive sides of changing your fitness routine. What are we going to do with that bike stand, once we can go out again?

In the same way that all roads lead to Rome, our capitalism has lead our ways to consumerism, and with that euphoria came… Came a great consumerism.

We forgot about the long term

Under the state of exception, we forgot about the long term. Once again, we are hoovering from short-term solutions to short-term solutions, causing a new problem every time we solve another. The United States withdrawal from the UN, all the plastic used for this crisis, the COP25 lack of ambition, for example. The economy will be boosted once it is allowed to, reverting the plummeting of the toxic clouds above the north of Italy, China and the rest of the world. We clearly have no consciousness of circular economy, and we are not thinking of what will we do with all those useless things we bought during the lockdown.

If you read this while you were making bread with your brand new bread maker, don’t worry, I have made tons of mistakes. But the important thing is being more aware every day. The important thing is thinking twice before buying anything. With the things I don’t need anymore, I usually try these things, in this order:

Sell it at the second hand market . Somebody may be waiting for all of us to get bored of a tool in order to give it a second –and maybe better– life. If I am going to make no use of this, my prices are pretty affordable. Before disassembling the machine, which would transform its use for humans, this is the best way to hold together its maximum amount of value.

. Somebody may be waiting for all of us to get bored of a tool in order to give it a second –and maybe better– life. If I am going to make no use of this, my prices are pretty affordable. Before disassembling the machine, which would transform its use for humans, this is the best way to hold together its maximum amount of value. Think of anybody who may give it a good use and give it to her, for free. Doing good brings good back, they say.

and give it to her, for free. Doing good brings good back, they say. Check whether the seller is collecting his stuff in order to re-process it. You will not make any money out of this, but the provider may be the best chance, in terms of efficiency and supply chain. The provider has its procedures to check the electronics and knows her materials. Jaguar / Land Rover and Apple, for example, are working on this closed loop.

Dispose it at a recycling point, where the materials are separated and treated accordingly, instead of being buried at a landfill.

If you are still here, remember to check out the rest of my posts.

Stay sustainable.