[mumblemumble]

I wouldn't be surprised if there's something there, but I do have a hard time lining those theories up with my past interactions around the subject.

For example, a long time ago a roommate of mine wanted to get rid of some furniture, so he had a thrift store send a van to pick it up. It had all been pretty severely damaged by his dog. Having previously worked at a thrift store, I was pretty confident that they wouldn't want any of it, and mentioned as much to him, but he was sure they would be able to find a use for it, and so we schlepped it out to the curb.

After the van had left without taking much of any of it, and we were carrying it all around to the alley for the garbage trucks to pick up (which is free in our city, even for furniture), the thing he expressed remorse about wasn't the donation receipt. It was that he thought it was wasteful to throw all this furniture in the trash just because his dog had been chewing on it.

I still have similar conversations with my partner about this. Her bias is, she wants to hold on to even the slightest glimmer of hope that someone might find a use for an item. I lean toward not wanting to make the staff of the thrift store throw out my trash for me. I think it might just be hard to see if that way if you haven't been there. Neither of us cares about donation receipts, which we don't bother to collect, and still live in the same city that will take anything that will physically fit inside a garbage truck for no extra charge.

Tangentially, if you haven't seen one swallow a full-size sofa, put it on your bucket list. It's a fascinating spectacle.

[giantrobot]

> Her bias is, she wants to hold on to even the slightest glimmer of hope that someone might find a use for an item.

I have this same problem. It's actually taken me a lot of effort over the years to get away from this mindset. Not that I try to be wasteful, it's more of just forcing myself to be realistic about the likelihood of me being able to repurpose a thing. Sure a thing might be useful to someone but unless I'm really interested in the effort required to find them and facilitate the transaction, that thing is just going to sit around. I have finite space available so unless I really want something or really want to make a donation happen it's going in the trash.

[mumblemumble]

I'm finding that I get a lot more utility out of framing it thus: the trash isn't created when I put it in the bin, the trash is created when I buy it in the first place. Once that happens, it's going to get pitched. Could be today, could be in 30 years, but someday it will happen.

Where that pays extra dividends is in limiting the accumulation of clutter. I used to buy electronic gizmos I didn't, strictly speaking, need, at a fairly regular pace. But I was storing up a bunch of crap I'd eventually have to throw away the next time I declutter. And I had a lot of clutter. Reminding myself that every consumer product is future trash helps limit the accumulation of clutter, which, in turn, limits how often I have to feel bad about throwing it away.

[giantrobot]

That's a good way to frame things which is something I now do a better job with. My clutter problems were/are mostly from old me not thinking in that way.

[AnthonyMouse]

The big question here is how to minimize transaction costs.

You often have an item which in good condition would be worth e.g. $55, but it's damaged. If you ask someone how much they need to repair it, they say $50. So in a frictionless plane you would make $5.

But in order to pay them, you would have to fill out tax paperwork, and they would have to fill out tax paperwork, and you would have to pay payroll tax, and they would have to pay income tax, and in the end you would pay $60 and they would receive $30. So instead you throw the item away.

Whereas what you should do instead is to just give it to them. They were willing to fix the item for what in practice was $30. If you gave it to them, they would do the labor they valued at $30, or at $25 because they can omit the labor of doing the tax paperwork, and then they have a $55 item instead of the item going into a landfill.

There are also people who might be willing to use the item as-is without repairing it, if it was free.

So the real problem here is that these organizations aren't allowing people to pick through what they're throwing out. Which wouldn't make them any money, but it would be better for the world.

[KillahBhyte]

I can get on board with this, too. Hoarders are kind of the far end of that spectrum and I can see the same closer to home tendencies in my partner as well. She struggles to dispose of clearly broken beyond repair or reuse items.

Difference in perspective down to cultural bias. Living too long in rural southern US has jaded me into looking for selfish intent behind any altruistic curtains.