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I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

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Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#201

Post by susiecambria »

MisterTea wrote: post #165
dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

These are people far disconnected from reality and honestly dont give a damn about anything but projecting their wealth. Why else would they spend $400 on something as mundane as slippers? They are shallow and careless.

The $395 Balenciaga slides really stood out to me, too.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#202

Post by creer »

dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

So, it's surprising at first, but as others mention, it seems like a roughly functioning system: The students are rushed by the university to move, move, move. They do what they can which is not much for many, who don't yet have their life in order. Buying too much, too expensive, not downscaling in time, etc, why so surprising? Some universities have a decent system in place for temporarily holding that stuff for other students. For the rest, the locals - individuals and business can come and do the sorting.

Same thing happens on Craigslist: You can post an item for sale for a fair price - and it may take days or weeks - or you can post it free and it will gone in hours (to someone who will resell it perhaps but whatever.)

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#203

Post by mr3martinis »

dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

Many apartment buildings have policies about where trash can be left, including at move out, otherwise there’s always trash around building entrances for the maintenance staff to clean up. Also, the Durham area is pretty suburban, so this apartment complex might not have much pedestrian traffic or even a sidewalk. It’s wasteful, but this is likely the situation.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#204

Post by atonse »

monocasa wrote: post #168
dkga wrote: post #150

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text. First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „…

> First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination? At my wife's alma mater, the way move out in the dorms worked was that you had 24hrs after your last final and then had to be gone. That didn't really leave a lot of time for a lot of people that had maybe two checked bags and a carry on to work with, and had spent the previous time focused on study…

So the solution could be top down:

- give 2-3 extra days for students to move out.

- maybe partner with a few moving/freight companies? you’d bring them a lot of customers and they could provide a good rate.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#205

Post by thinkcontext »

dylan604 wrote: post #189
bluGill wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. Does it? I don't know anything about Duke, but a lot of colleges I know of tell your tuition is around that price. However dig deeper and you discover it is almost impossible to not get scholarships thus making the real price cheaper. I know of one school near me that automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship, then they look at your background to figure…

Then why not just lower the tuition by 40%?

Because the really rich and international do pay full cost which means they can lower it for lower income students.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#206

Post by Analemma_ »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #121
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #77

Not surprising. I remember being an undergrad when my BA was ending. I was out-of-state, my nearest relative was several hours away, and I basically only had enough space to pack up from my room whatever could fit in my car. I don't think I threw out much , but there were definitely some things that were resigned to the bin because I simply didn't have anywhere else to put them. For example, I'm pretty sure I threw o…

> It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress. Is it really that surprising? Places don't take a used mattress for the same reason they don't take used underwear - you may say it's "lightly used", but once it's out of the box, that guarantee is gone, and a used mattress is something that hardly anyone would be willing to buy. That is especially true since you can now buy a brand new m…

> You can barely give away china these days. We would get beautiful, perfect condition full sets of china, mark it down to like $30 for an entire 12-place set, and it would just sit there.

Chinaware sucks to actually use: it can't go in the dishwasher, it's smaller and less convenient than normal-sized dishes, and so on. Even if you want to spend lots of money on dishes, you're much better served buying nice stoneware at Crate and Barrel or something, it looks as good or better and is actually useful. Chinaware generally just sits there and takes up space; I wouldn't take any even if it was free.

And the thing is, it's not really a tragedy that nobody bothers with chinaware anymore. Chinaware was only ever a "keeping up with the Joneses" status-signalling purchase to show you'd made it as a middle-class household, and it's been replaced by other goods for that purpose. We're not losing out on some kind of heritage tradition here, it's just one set of shallow luxury goods getting replaced with another.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#207

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

creer wrote: post #192
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress. Is it really that surprising? Places don't take a used mattress for the same reason they don't take used underwear - you may say it's "lightly used", but once it's out of the box, that guarantee is gone, and a used mattress is something that hardly anyone would be willing to buy. That is especially true since you can now buy a brand new m…

Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing. > You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there. Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously? > Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10] Well duh? Price lower? Obviously? Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-n…

> Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing.

When I read things like this, I laugh when people think that it's possible to bring much manufacturing back to the US.

The thrift store I volunteered at was for an animal charity. After paying rent and some salaries, the general rule of thumb was that we were able to convert volunteer hours to profit at about minimum wage rates (and I mean ~$8/hr rates, not "living wage" rates).

So, to be honest, your post made me unreasonably angry. No, thrift stores are not a front, they're not stupid, and they have certainly noticed the cheap crap from Shein and Temu. The issue is that crap is produced incredibly cheaply - literal peasant wages and zero pesky things like environmental regulations.

So where I volunteered, we originally had standard prices for all non-designer clothes, e.g. $5 for short sleeve shirts and shorts, $7 for pants, etc. It would simply take much too much time to try to price everything individually. And, for most clothes, these were great deals. But when cheap fast fashion came along, we had a rule we would just throw away any of that shit. But every now and then something would make it onto the floor, and we'd have an irate customer basically say what you are saying, "How can you charge $7 for this pair of pants when they're like $10 new." So then we'd apologize, and explain that we usually threw that stuff away. People just couldn't understand that we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#208

Post by bluGill »

bryanmgreen wrote: post #52

So many campaigns for recycle… but not enough on the two more important pieces - Reduce and Reuse. Over the years I have refurbed some furniture which is a fun hobby in addition to being environmentally helpful. I think it’s also worthwhile to pay for higher quality items that are made well and last. A nice pair of leather boots can get repaired for minimal cost and mine have lasted over a decade of very hard wear.

Most of the things on the list look like things most people would choose to have. Maybe a cheaper version, but few would choose to do without some version of the thing.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#209

Post by bluGill »

dgunay wrote: post #126
karaterobot wrote: post #41

College students may have no concept of how much stuff costs when their parents buy it. But to be fair, I'm in my 40s, and throw out a lot of expensive stuff too. When you're moving house, you're often tired and anxious, and thinking more about the burden of hauling crap around than you are with the price of replacing it. For me, I actually appreciate the forcing function imposed by the size of a moving van or a stor…

I had a bad habit of accumulating stuff that had some abstract value (may come in handy in the future, is a good deal, etc), and letting go of a lot of it was hard in part because of guilt surrounding environmentalism. Even something that I had no attachment to whatsoever felt extremely difficult to get rid of because it needed to be disposed of ethically. The idea "you can't save the rainforest if you're depressed"[…

I have realized that I won't give things up and so I avoid getting things without some surety that I will really want it around for decades. There are a lot of neat toys in the world that I honestly wouldn't have time to enjoy them all anyway so better to focus on ones I really will enjoy.

Re: I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

#210

Post by bluGill »

dml2135 wrote: post #48
knowitnone wrote: post #23

I live in a uni town and when graduation comes around(pretty soon), there are all kinds of goodies on the sidewalk and trashbins. LCD TVs, clothing, furniture, food, bikes, etc. Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it.

> Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it. My impression is that only about half the population, at most, even pretends to care about environmentalism.

Everyone cares. They will often convince themselves that some things don't matter (global warming) or that their part is insignificant, but everyone cares in some way/time/form.
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