Nice Suit

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Rules of Engagement
NICE SUIT

I went to my agent one day and checked in to see if there were any acting jobs coming up. I was wearing a nice suit, and I asked my agent what she thought it was worth. I knew what I had paid, but I really didn’t know what it was worth. This is a lady who knows a fine suit when she sees one, and has been involved in the fashion industry for more than three decades. She looked at the material and the labels and told me it must have cost $1500.00. I was pleasantly surprised. I had paid only one hundred dollars for that suit on EBay. This may not be the kind of recycling you are used to hearing about, but I never felt better wearing a suit for which someone else had paid a bundle.

Today I want to persuade you to be a recycling genius. I’ll talk about what recycling is, where recycling can take place, and who should recycle.

First, let’s talk about what I mean when I say the word recycling. Many people are familiar with the standard types of recycling, where end consumers sort glass from plastic and then hope the recycling companies can use the fruits of their labor. I think this kind of recycling is great, but many communities in the world don’t offer recycling services. So the kind of recycling I would like to discuss is the kind all of us can do. I’ll describe three kinds of “locals only” recycling that anyone can do anywhere. We can all reuse, reduce and resell. This sounds like the official slogan of recycling, “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle”, but I have adapted it for places which don’t have recycling facilities.

Reduce is easy to understand. We live in a consumer society, which means we may have more than one television, computer or car. When something is replaced, is it necessary to replace it?

Or are we just buying the newest model so we can have all the new features? Less consumption means less use, and as we reduce our use, we also need to recycle less. Another version of reducing could be to take the things we no longer use and put them somewhere they will be used. We reduce our clutter, and the item gets new life.

This leads into reuse. As someone acquires our old item, it is reused. Often a minor repair is all that is needed to prevent an item from ending up as trash. I have repaired my car so many times I don’t think there is an original part left on the vehicle. Of course, there are old parts left, but I have been able to reuse the car every time it broke down, and I recently put another engine into it. Even the “new” engine was recycled, since it was a used engine with about 35,000 miles on it. Who knows when it will finally break down and not be useful anymore? Until then, I will continue to recycle new parts into the car, so it can be “reused.”

In the second part of this discussion, let’s talk about where you can recycle. I’ve tried to adapt my topic to discuss recycling we can do where we live since many communities have no “official” or local recycling programs. But recycling doesn’t have to be limited to places where governments or other companies support your recycling efforts. So this part of will give you some ideas you may not have considered, even if you do have recycling services in your local area. I’ll describe this idea as “Where can this be used?”

If you have a computer you no longer need, most recycling centers won’t bother with it. It has special recycling needs, and there are very few of this type of recycling centers. But if I ask the question “Where can this be used?” I’ll bet you have already thought of several before I can list them here. Schools, churches, community centers, senior citizen centers, boys and girls clubs, local organizations and charitable societies can all use an old computer. They may even have the connections to get the right kind of recycling done if they can’t use the computer. It’s a much better choice than sending it to the landfill – computers have parts which are toxic.

Another question to ask yourself has to do with the reselling for recycling we discussed earlier. Ask yourself, “Does this item have value to others?” If it does have value, then you can decide which is the best way to resell the item. Maybe this computer is just in the wrong part of the country. With EBay and other online auction sites, almost anything can be sold and shipped to anywhere in the world. Here’s an example of something I have actually sold and shipped on EBay.

We have a forty year old English walnut tree in my front yard, which means I have to gather hundreds of walnuts every fall unless I want walnut seedling sprouting in my lawn. After collecting the huge seeds for years, I thought it might be interesting to plant some in the garden and see if they would grow.

Of course they sprouted and soon I had dozens of walnut seedling, but what could I do with them? I decided to try to sell some of them on EBay, and since they hadn’t really cost me anything except my time and some water, I could charge a low price. A quick survey of other online gardening auctions and retailers, I decided to sell the 10 to 12 inch newly-sprouted trees for $4.99 each, and charge $2.99 for shipping.

Did it work? Did I recycle the walnuts I really wasn’t using? To make a long story short, every summer I dig walnut seedlings from my yard, add a bit of potting soil, wrap the roots and soil in a piece of newspaper, add a little water, squeeze out the excess, seal up the bag and send trees through the US postal service to places all over the United States. Every summer, I sell between two and three hundred seedlings, now charging about $6.99 per tree and $3.99 for shipping. For $10.98, my satisfied customers (over 3100 positive feedbacks on EBay so far) get a brand-new walnut tree ready to grow in their yard. If it dies or needs replaced, I package up another and send it to them. Even if I have to send them three trees, I have still made money.

If you think this is an isolated case, log on to EBay. You would be surprised at what some people sell, and other people buy.

So far I’ve told you “what” recycling is, and “where” we can recycle. Let’s now discuss

“who ” should recycle.

I know everyone can recycle, but most people don’t. Why not? They may not see the advantages clearly. So let’s try and decide who should recycle by examining the advantages of recycling.

Anyone who wants more money, a cleaner environment, less landfill, more parsimony , and finally a clearer conscience should recycle. It’s like the George Carlin routine about leftovers. He says when you save leftover food, you feel good, because you are saving food. Then you get to feel good when you throw away the leftover food after it has gone moldy in the refrigerator, because you are saving your life.

But with recycling, we can find a good place for those no longer useful items.

Let’s look at how each advantage can apply to you. I once saw a fish finder at a local thrift store. Someone had donated it, and that made them feel good. When I saw the price, it made me feel better, because I knew I could resell it for more. It was like finding a rare painting at a yard sale. I paid the money to the thrift store, which made them happy because now they had money instead of a fish-finder. As the consummate EBay aficionado I am, I promptly listed the fish finder and sold it for six times what I paid, even after the fees, postage and packaging. Now someone else in the country was happy, because they had beat several people in the bidding, and now they had a fish finder. Even the people at EBay and Paypal felt good, since they had made money letting me use their websites for a modest fee.

This example also shows how it cleans our environment. The fish finder could have been sent to the dump. In a landfill, it doesn’t make anyone feel good. With recycling, at least four of us got to feel good about what we were doing.

Today I’ve discussed what recycling is, where we can recycle, and who should be recycling .

I hope it inspires you to reduce, reuse, recycle, and perhaps make some money. But at the very least, I hope it makes you feel good, too.

The day I bought a used suit on EBay, I didn’t know I was buying a $1500 suit. But when my agent told me how much it was worth, I was glad I had become part of the recycling age. It gave new life to a suit that might have just been thrown away. Somewhere, someone didn’t need that suit anymore – either it didn’t fit or they were dead – but I had a use for the suit. Someone out there showed the common sense to recycle my suit through EBay, and for one hundred dollars, I thought to myself, ‘I just might be able to recycle some of my stuff, too.’

Now it’s your turn. Reduce, reuse and recycle — resell. You’ll feel good, and you may get a nice suit out of the deal.