"The Fate of Stuff"

Consumerism is the basis for the entire global economy.  We buy stuff, use it for a while, mostly throw the stuff away and buy new stuff.  Sometimes we keep the old stuff in our garage or rent space in a storage facility and pay to have it sit out of sight and out of mind. In his new book, Secondhand, Adam Minter takes a close look at what happens to all of the stuff with which we fill our lives for a while until we replace it with new stuff.  What happens to all the shinny new things we buy?

They end up in the landfill or the incinerator. I mean, there is no green heaven, if you will. Everything wears out eventually and everything gets tossed out. ... That's the fate of stuff. That's the fate of our consumerist societies. If we spend our time thinking this is going to be used perpetually, forever, even the best-made garment, the most robust smartphone, we're deluding ourselves a bit. Eventually, everything does have to die. ... It's sort of the ultimate story of consumerism and it's the dark side. We can't really delude ourselves into thinking everything lasts forever.

The only solution to avoid choking on the garbage that our stuff becomes is to buy less stuff and to make sure the stuff we do buy lasts as long as possible.