Empire of Things
Page 86
GOOD RIDDANCE
So far, we have followed stuff from the kitchen and the cupboard to the bin. But this is not the only route possessions take. To know how wasteful we are, we need to view throwing things away alongside other channels and strategies for coping with more stuff, such as gifting, passing on, repairing and storing.
Giving stuff away, either for free or at a price, is one way to keep goods in circulation. Charity shops, eBay and Freecycle have brought this strategy a lot of recent attention. In Britain alone, there are some 7,000 charity shops. Car-boot sales attract a million people every week.75 At the time of writing, Freecycle has close to 10 million members across the world who pass on everything from unwanted cutlery to mobile homes. Websites and social networks enable owners to upload their unwanted items to a virtual skip. Fashion lovers can swap or ‘swish’ their unwanted designer bags online; gardeners have their seed-swapping sites.
We should not get over-excited about these trends. A new culture of sharing has not replaced individual wastefulness. For one, the things shared are quite limited. They make barely a dent in the big picture of material resource use. Car-sharing and giving away olds sofas and TVs may be beneficial, but such gains have been more than cancelled out by a declining willingness to share housing and the rise of solo living, where each individual has a fridge, washing machine and TV all to themselves. The number of solo dwellers in the world has risen sharply in the last couple of decades, from 153 million in 1996 to 277 million in 2011. In the United States today, every fourth household has only one resident; in the United Kingdom, it is almost every third. It would be unwise to put the blame for this trend solely at market-driven materialism. In welfare states such as Sweden and Norway, more than 40 per cent of households are solo. Since optimists point to the young as the harbingers of a new culture of sharing, it is worth noting that, unlike in the past, it is young people in their twenties and thirties who make up the fastest-growing group of solo dwellers.76
Yes, the internet has made it easier for people to sub-let and share their holiday homes, but that does not automatically mean that resource use has fallen or the number of holiday homes has declined. Data on secondary homes is not consistently collected in Europe, and by some countries not at all. Still, what is available suggests a rapid and ongoing increase in their number. In France in 2005, there were 2.9 million vacation homes, and the share of non-resident owners had increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent since 1997. In Spain, the Ministry of Housing combined census data with surveys of inbound visitors, and reached the conclusion that 1.5 million homes in the country in 2008 were secondary dwellings. They made up 37 per cent of the increase in total housing stock between 2001 and 2008. That is a lot of bricks and mortar, and a lot of appliances and furniture to go inside. About 58 per cent of these dwellings were in the prime tourist areas by the sea. The number of English people owning a second home abroad doubled in the decade after 1997, reaching a quarter of a million in 2007; that of Norwegians quadrupled between 2002 and 2008.77
Of course, champions of the sharing economy might respond that, nonetheless, online services such as airbnb provide shared, alternative lodging that makes more efficient use of existing resources, meaning that fewer hotels are required. On New Year’s Eve in 2014, more than half a million people on this planet stayed on sofas and in flats rented via airbnb. Studies have certainly shown a correlation between the spread of airbnb lodgings on offer and a fall in hotel bookings, especially among cheaper hotels. In January 2015, hotel revenue in New York City was 19 per cent lower than in the previous year, the result, partly, of lots of snow and a weak euro, but partly also of more private rooms readily available on the site. Lower demand for cheap hotel rooms, however, does not necessarily translate into lower demand for goods and resources. Private holiday rentals hurt hotel owners, not their customers. In fact, hotels responded by lowering their rates, leaving tourists with more money to spend on other things. More and cheaper private accommodation may have encouraged airbnb customers to take more city holidays and mini-breaks, a kind of touristic rebound effect. And, finally, their temporary hosts gained additional income. Sharing only reduces resources if hosts throw open their homes to strangers and stay put, or temporarily move in with friends around the corner. But many hosts rent out their entire apartment and combine letting with going on holiday themselves. Reduction and displacement of resources and demand in some cases is matched, perhaps even outdone, by growth in others. Indeed, airbnb itself has responded to its critics by emphasizing that they are bringing more business and cash to city centres and their shops and restaurants.78
We must, moreover, not forget that people have always passed on goods. What is new is not the sharing of stuff but that it is less and less with family and friends and more and more with strangers, with the help of the internet. The technology of sharing responds to a society of more fleeting relationships and more people living alone. But this does not mean that sharing is new. Car sharing was widespread in the inter-war years.79 Even in the affluent 1950s and ’60s it was normal for families to pass on clothes, toys and furniture from one child or cousin to another. So was the trade in second-hand goods; mothers’ groups sell ‘nearly new’ children’s clothes and toys in church halls across London to this day.80
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, second-hand was a way of life for most Europeans – in rural Flanders as much as in bustling Antwerp, for rich and poor. Auctions circulated beds, sheets and pillows through society but, above all, kitchen utensils and clothing. Initially, many second-hand dealers sold new and old. In Antwerp, mercers pressed the city to restrict their operations from the 1670s.81 It was the start of their social and commercial marginalization. True, second-hand dealers never entirely disappeared. But their relative position vis-à-vis shopkeepers who sold ‘new’ steadily deteriorated. As clothes became cheaper and less sturdy and as the fashion cycle accelerated, their second-hand value dropped, and with it the profits and standing of their dealers. By 1900, second-hand was largely for the poor, although the invention of vintage did give it a new lease of life at the top of society, too.
Relative decline within Europe, however, has been accompanied by expansion outside it. In the 1980s–’90s, the global export of second-hand clothing increased more than six-fold.82 In Sub-Saharan Africa, a third of all textile imports were second-hand in these years. The twin channels which fed this system were already taking shape in the late nineteenth century: Christian charities and commercial operators. The anthropologist Karen Hansen followed the twists and turns taken by clothes on their way from European to Zambian wardrobes in the 1990s. Few Western donors and Zambian consumers were aware that most clothes did not come via the charity shop. Most donations, in fact, never made it inside the shop. Instead they were collected, pressed and sold in large 2,000lb bales to textile salvagers and exporters. The will to do good and give away rather than throw away overwhelmed charities’ ability to process the textiles. Once the clothes arrived in Lusaka, they were altered and refashioned by local salaula (rummaging) traders. Trims, gold buttons and a new cut turned old clothes into new. Buying used clothes had less to do with imitating the West, Hansen found in her fieldwork, or with the subcultural irony that has preoccupied cultural theorists. They dressed up, according to Hansen, ‘to escape their own economic powerlessness, momentarily and vicariously’.83 Zambians, in fact, did not talk about ‘Western’ clothes but about shirts and dresses from the ‘outside’, which could mean Hong Kong as well as Hollywood.
In Zambia, used clothes went up as the economy went downhill in the 1970s. But second-hand clothing also boomed in rich countries. In Britain, such shops doubled their turnover in the 1990s. How beneficial has this renaissance of re-use been for the environment? Do people who give away clothes, books and other possessions help save the planet by reducing material use, as some environmentalists have pleaded,84 or do they harm it by putting still more stuff into circulation?
The answer depends
on context and the item in question. A detailed study of fifty-nine households in Nottingham, England, found that they disposed of a total of 4,500 objects in a single year. Just under a third was binned, 10 per cent each was either sold or moved to the loft, half was given away to family, friends or charity shops. The flow of things illustrates the interconnection between the desire for novelty and an impulse to do good by giving stuff away. ‘Sarah’ went through her wardrobe twice a year to separate those items that were ‘no longer me’. A once ‘groovy’ coat was ready for charity – ‘I’d seen too many really boring people wearing it.’85 The charity shop stands at the end of a chain of self-fashioning in which new things are needed to redefine who we are. Passing on old but fully functioning toasters and electronic goods to family members simultaneously demonstrates one’s care for people and for things. At the same time, it creates space for a shiny replacement. In addition, selling used cars and similar goods where money can be made gives owners the cash to buy a new model. Their purchase presumes that such goods can be resold later.
The changing life span of things matters here. Packard, in The Waste Makers, singled out planned obsolescence and warned of ever faster product cycles. The introduction, in the 1950s, of ‘printed circuits’, for example, made transistor radios all but unrepairable. Since then, the ‘death-dating’ of components has added sophistication to the art of ‘made to break’.86 Consumers have been strangely divided in their attitudes to durability. A 2005 British study found them evenly split between those who wished products lasted longer and those who were happy with their lifespan. Five years for a computer was felt to be all right.87 Mobile phones and computers turn into dinosaurs long before they fall apart. According to one estimate, 49 per cent of all mobile devices were replaced in the United States in 2014. This is an extraordinary number for any product, but the figure hides two trends that may be pulling in opposite directions. The percentage of devices that go through an annual replacement cycle has gone up (from 45 per cent in 2013 to 49 per cent in 2014). But what about the remainder? Interestingly, the percentage of mobiles that were replaced only when they reached obsolescence also went up (from 15 to 30 per cent). In 2010– 12, every second mobile phone was changed after two years – ‘New Every Two’, in the words of one provider’s slogan. In 2014, this figure was down to 16 per cent. One reason for phones being changed more slowly was the introduction of Equipment Installment Plans (EIP) which offered annual upgrades on existing phones and discounted service pricing. Another was the death of smaller handset providers and a decline in profits, which discouraged the rapid development of new products. Whether the relative ageing of mobile phones is a good thing or whether it might slow down innovation, speed and efficiency in the long run is a separate matter.88
The point here is that contemporary life is not all about ever faster obsolescence. There are also counter-trends of senescence. Personal computers in the 1990s and 2000s were often replaced every two years. But these were years of rapid innovation in chips and technology. Since then, the potential for innovation has diminished, with the result that PCs stick around for five to seven years. The rise in life expectancy has been particularly pronounced for automobiles. Since the 1973 oil crisis, cars in the United States extended theirs by 50 per cent. This has made for a more lucrative second-hand car market, where sales have doubled. In these ways, passing on and second-hand are partners of rising demand rather than thrift.
Causation, though, also runs in the opposite direction.89 Not every used good is a valuable asset like a car. Try and sell a second-hand copy of Harry Potter. EBay carries entire libraries of unsold, used books. The effect of second-hand trade on demand and resources depends on the articles in question. Most clothes are cheap and have little resale value. Their value, in turn, is conditioned by politics. Second-hand markets, like markets in general, are political creatures. The big wave of second-hand clothes flowing into developing countries seriously repressed the sale of new clothes. That is why so many countries in the 1980s and ’90s banned such imports, to protect their own textile industries, although the market stalls in Zambia suggested there were plenty of loopholes for clothes from outside to slip through. It has been pressure from the World Trade Organization (WTO), since the late 1990s, which has lifted many bans on used goods. Rather than being a radical alternative to it, second-hand has flourished in a liberal market order.
Repairing is the second major process in the repertoire of keeping things alive and out of the bin. It is a topic about which we know surprisingly little. As with second-hand markets, the focus has been on textiles. Anecdotal evidence paints a picture of terminal decline. Who today under the age of sixty darns their socks, let alone knows how to turn a suit into a dress, as Rauschenberg’s mother did? The age of the sewing machine – that most coveted consumer durable of the inter-war years – is over, at least for the vast majority of people in the affluent West. It is less clear why we should mourn its passing. The long hours of sewing and darning did not just reflect a love of things but also a low regard for the people who did it. Women’s labour was cheap, and in the home it was free. Once wages were rising, repair inevitably became less attractive; greater productivity and the drop in the price of clothing made it even less so. Repair has become an optional, sometimes expensive hobby, less an exercise in thrift. The large German time-use survey in 2001–2 revealed that one in five men was regularly busy doing repairs around the home, fixing a bicycle, maintaining an appliance or engaged in some form of craftsmanship, for one and a half hours a day. In neighbouring Austria, a quarter of women routinely sewed and knitted, as many as went to church, and almost as many as went shopping for pleasure.90
In the long history of consumer society, the disappearance of the repairman has been a recent and partial phenomenon. They have come and gone as new products and technologies arrived and then, over time, became cheaper to replace. The car brought with it not only glitzy showrooms but grimy auto-repair shops – in 1967, there were 139,243 of these across the United States. The 1950s and ’60s – the age of affluence – saw a four-fold increase in the value of all the various repair services in America, a bigger rise than that enjoyed by the retail trade. People spent more money on new TVs and radios, but the amount spent on having them fixed rose even faster. By the late 1960s, there were 45,000 proprietors of electrical repair shops and 20,000 furniture upholsterers.91 Forty years later, their number had plummeted. For every four TV repairmen and appliance service technicians then, only one is still around today. Older trades tell a similar story. The disappearance of the shoe repairman from American and European street corners is characteristic. In America in 1967, over 9,000 were still fixing heels. By 2004, fewer than 3,000 were left. Thanks to the Asian miracle, many shoes, shirts, umbrellas and other articles are so cheap that taking them for repair to a cobbler or seamstress who earns even a minimum wage no longer makes sense. Anyone who has marvelled at umbrella repairmen in Delhi and Beijing and wondered why they are never around in London or Amsterdam when one needs them will appreciate the economic logic of this change.
Fortunately, there are trends in reverse as well, especially in high-end electronic products where governments have had the courage to counter the commercial tide of low-cost replacement and disposal. Japan’s treatment of old personal computers (PCs) is a shining example. In 2001, a voluntary take-back and recycling scheme was introduced for used business computers. Two years later, it was extended to home computers. Instead of ending up on the trash heap, by 2004, two thirds were saved and refitted for domestic use or export. Of the 7 million used PCs thrown out every year, over 1 million PCs and laptops now find their way into a second-hand market, according to the Refurbished Information Technology Equipment Association (RITEA), the trade body of PC re-use companies. RITEA established labels and qualification schemes, including guidelines on erasing data.92 Cheap Chinese production may have eliminated cobblers and TV repairmen in New York and Berlin, but at the same time it has given rise to a
new generation of consumers hungry for refitted, second-hand products. This effect of development is easily overlooked. India, Brazil and Africa hold out a similar potential. How soon it will be tapped is unclear. At present, however, the number of refitted Japanese PCs that reach new users abroad is dwarfed by the mountains of non-functional machines and toxic electronic waste (containing lead, mercury and cadmium) that are dumped in places such as Lagos and the Ivory Coast.93
A final strategy of diversion is storage. In the biography of goods, lofts, garages and storage units are holding stations before ‘end-of-life management’ either breaks objects into recyclable pieces or buries them in a landfill. Humans have stored their valuables since they first had them. In ancient China, people kept objects in clay pots in public underground storage. In European port cities in the eighteenth century, commercial warehouses started to cater for sailors and their possessions. In the United States, professional storage traces its roots to the Civil War. The real take-off, however, came in the 1960s–’80s, with the spread of self-storage. The United States today counts 50,000 self-storage facilities which together offer a space three times the size of Manhattan.94 One in ten households uses them. Developed countries elsewhere are following in American footsteps. In Seoul, as in Manhattan, balconies are no longer for sitting out on but for stuff; in the former, the elimination of storage inside new-built apartments added to the pressure.95
Never before, perhaps, in human history have hoarding and clutter given rise to so much soul-searching. As a large billboard for ‘mini-storage’ in Manhattan puts it: ‘Material Possessions Won’t Make You Happy Or Maybe They Will.’ (see Plate 70) There are Clutterers Anonymous and professional organizers who coach people suffering from ‘Disposophobia TM’, that is, the fear of getting rid of stuff: ‘Call 1 800 ThePlan’.96 The promotion of novelty has simultaneously reinforced the urge to collect and preserve old stuff, be it for a sense of physical security, status or immortality. Collectoronline.com lists over 2,000 clubs devoted to one form of collectible or another, from glass and vintage cars to corkscrews and beer bottles. Capron, Illinois, is home to a vacuum cleaner collectors club, with dedicated members in North America and Europe. Edgar in Belgium is the proud owner of ‘Holland electro toppys (his masters voice edition rare!!)’. On Vacuumland, their web-based library, aficionados can admire the 1908 Hoover Model O in action.97 A genetic study has identified linkages to compulsive hoarding on chromosome 14 in families with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.98 Genetics, however, cannot explain how storage has developed into a normal part of everyday life in such a short period of time. It mainly came about because a rising number of possessions intersected with a steep rise in personal mobility, as people moved house and work more frequently.