Parts of the whole – a more sustainable way of looking at things

Things. If there is one thing we humans all have in common, it's things. We tend to have a lot of them, whatever the things are, and we use them until they wear out. So let's talk about the importance of replacing parts and not wholes.

I've talked before about the pretty nice space heater someone trashed and then Len fixed by replacing an inexpensive part. Here's another true story. 

I was baking a cake -- in fact, it was this dinosaur cake I still have to tell you about -- and it was taking forever. Something was wrong with the oven. It turned out to be fudgiest chocolate cake I'd ever made, thanks to cooking low and slow and possibly being underdone, but anyway, I also needed to bake dinosaur cookies. We packed up the ingredients and borrowed the in-laws' kitchen for the rest of the evening. 

We explained our oven wasn't staying hot. Maybe I'd even stuck my head under the broiler to investigate and had Googled it already to determine the problem was the igniter. And, this question arose: "Oh no, so you have to buy a new oven now?"

No. We most certainly did not have to buy a whole new oven just because it wasn't working. We especially did not have to buy a whole new oven because we could pinpoint the specific part that wasn't working. And that's the thing about things. It's too easy to just buy a whole new thing, so we think that's the best solution. But, you're wasting your money and overfilling the trash heap. It's just as easy to buy a new part instead. In fact, I'd argue it's easier to buy a part instead of a whole, because parts can fit in your mailbox, and sometimes whole things (like an oven) can't even fit in your car, and sometimes even fitting through the front door looks iffy. 

Even if you're not inclined to DIY, an appliance repair person can replace just a part for you. The labor may not be cheap, but it's gotta cost less than a whole new appliance delivered and installed. And then you have something pocket-sized to throw away instead of something oven-sized. A great example -- your vehicle. When something breaks on your car, you don't just buy a whole new car, do you? Maybe you do, I don't know. I think most of us don't. You can apply that logic to so many other things -- repair instead of replace.

I mentioned new parts fitting in your mailbox, and that brings me to some sad news. We will probably have to order online any vacuum parts for our decades-old Kirby, because the vacuum-repair shop near us, All Vac, recently closed for good after 38 years. The owner retired, is all, but he noted in the newspaper article about the event that newer vacuums aren't as easily serviceable and instead have become part of the "throwaway society." 

So yeah, some things -- especially the more electronic parts they have -- are hard to fix, and it does make more sense to just replace the whole thing. But, I encourage you to take a look at your things when they stop working, and really see -- Could you just replace a part? Can it be repaired instead of replaced? If it must be thrown away -- again especially for the electronics -- Can you recycle it? We just got the City of Aurora's notice of the next free electronics recycling drop-off. I bet your city has one, too.

Don't be part of the "throwaway society."

.