The Curse of Stuff

Broke down old office chair

One of the problems faced by our materialistic culture is how to get of what we don't want. I have an old office chair that is broken in couple of places. I could have throw it away and gotten a new chair, but getting rid of the old one would be a problem. I could cut it up and stuff it into my trash can, but it's going to consume most of the space in my trash can, which means it could take several weeks to dispose of it, depending on how much other trash there was. Thank god I don't live in Portland where they only collect trash once every two weeks.

The pneumatic cylinder supporting the chair has collapsed so I propped it up with a 2 x 4 block. The foam in one of the arms collapsed and edge of the underlying plastic arm was digging into my arm so I wrapped with an old terry cloth towel. 

I could get a bigger trash can, but then garbage hauler is going to want a hundred bucks a month instead of fifty, and I don't need to throw away an office chair every week. I needed to rid of a couch a while back so I loaded it into the truck and took it to the dump. Cost me like $60 to leave it there.

We spent a couple, maybe three grand getting debris hauled away from the new house remodeling project over the last couple of years. I really hated to throw some of that stuff away, it could have been really useful! But I know I am not going to do actually do anything with it. I did post a couple of ads on Craig's List to see if I could give some of it away. I did manage to get rid of the entire set of kitchen cabinets along with the granite countertops. We also sold a fancy electric range and I gave away a couple of solid core doors, but they didn't really amount to a hill of beans compared to the stuff we sent to the landfill, which was at least 3 big dumpsters worth.

We were scrambling last week to get the new house cleared out to make it ready for sale which means our recycling bin is stuffed to the gills with cardboard. Even without outside input it is still over half way full each time. All those Amazon boxes, I expect.

We got that all under control but we still have a bunch of styrofoam which is like a monster from your under your bed. It has no weight, it can't hurt you, but it won't go away and you can't get rid of it. Nobody wants it. Until now.

Now we have Agilyx, a 24 hour facility in Tigard that takes styrofoam. It's a 30 minute drive but we got rid of a big pile of styrofoam with no fuss and no bother.

Agilyx reactor where post-use plastic is broken down through the pyrolysis process

I hope they can collect enough styrofoam to make it pay off. Gah, styrofoam. It can be really useful, but it's so cheap that people just use it willy-nilly and discard it and you're stuck with a bunch of styrofoam eating into your life.

P.S. The folding arms on the chair are a big plus. I only use the left one. I leave the right one folded out of the way. That allows me to roll us closer to my desk since the arm is blocking me. Makes life easier all around.