Humanity is
drowning in a sea of… stuff. You know, stuff, things we can’t stop buying.
Shoes, clothes, furniture, electrical home appliances, kitchenware, digital
devices, automobiles. We buy stuff to use, to show to others, to keep up with the
neighbours, to give as gifts, to store so it can be used ‘someday.’ We buy
stuff for the pleasure that its ownership gives to us, we buy stuff so we can
pass it on to our children someday, we buy because we fall for the marketing
that makes us believe we need to ‘upgrade,’ and we buy stuff because, well,
because we can. But how many of us ever stop to think, even for a minute, what
happens to all our stuff once we are done with it, when we no longer have any
use for it and when we don’t want to keep it any longer? Where does it go, what
happens to it, where it ends up? Adam Minter’s book, Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale is a thought-provoking read that encourages us
to pause and think about the afterlife of the things we buy, once we sell,
donate or discard those things. It’s an unexpectedly interesting story that takes
you all over the world, exploring the world of ‘secondhand,’ which in some ways
almost functions like a parallel universe, a shadow economy that barely accounted
for.