#anything to delay those clothes from hitting the landfill

[rotteneldritchhorror]

Being able to sew your own clothes may not be the most accessible things (especially sustainably) but I will forever be an advocate for being able to MEND your own clothes

Even if it’s a kinda ugly whip stitch on the inside of your shirt or a ladder stitch to adjust the size of some jeans or a mismatching patch on the sole of your socks— literally anything that’ll make your clothes last longer, even if it just means they’ll last long enough for you to give it away to someone else

And then when it can no longer be mended, use it to mend other clothes

[newstfionline]

‘We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things’

By Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, Aug. 21, 2018

It’s easier than ever to buy things online. It’s so easy that Ryan Cassata sometimes does it in his sleep. Cassata, a 24-year-old singer/songwriter and actor from Los Angeles, recently got a notification from Amazon that a package had been shipped to his apartment, but he didn’t remember buying anything. When he logged onto his account and saw that a fanny pack and some socks were on the way, he remembered: A few nights back, he had woken up in the middle of the night to browse--and apparently shop on--Amazon.

He shops when he’s awake, too, buying little gadgets like an onion chopper, discounted staples like a 240-pack of gum, and decorations like a Himalayan salt lamp. The other day, he almost bought a pizza pool float, until he remembered that he doesn’t have a pool. “I don’t really need most of the stuff,” he tells me.

Thanks to a perfect storm of factors, Americans are amassing a lot of stuff. Before the advent of the internet, we had to set aside time to go browse the aisles of a physical store, which was only open a certain number of hours a day. Now, we can shop from anywhere, anytime--while we’re at work, or exercising, or even sleeping. We can tell Alexa we need new underwear, and in a few days, it will arrive on our doorstep. And because of the globalization of manufacturing, that underwear is cheaper than ever before--so cheap that we add it to our online shopping carts without a second thought. “There’s no reason not to shop--because clothing is so cheap, you feel like, ‘why not?’ There’s nothing lost in terms of the hit on your bank account,” Elizabeth Cline, the author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, told me.

Shopping online also feels good. Humans get a dopamine hit from buying stuff, according to research by Ann-Christine Duhaime, a professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. “As a general rule, your brain tweaks you to want more, more, more--indeed, more than those around you--both of ‘stuff’ and of stimulation and novelty,” Duhaime wrote in a Harvard Business Review essay last year. Online shopping allows us to get that dopamine hit, and then also experience delayed gratification when the order arrives a few days later, which may make it more physiologically rewarding than shopping in stores.

Sites like Amazon have made it especially easy to shop. In 1999, the Seattle retailer patented a one-click buying process, which allows customers to purchase something without entering their shipping address or credit card info. It launched its Prime program in 2005, and now more than 100 million people have signed on to pay $119 a year for “free” two-day shipping. As a result, most other major retailers offer free shipping too. Returning stuff is a little more difficult--shoppers usually have to print a label and then go to the post office or a UPS or FedEx site to return packages. Many wait too long, or decide the hassle isn’t worth it because the stuff was cheap anyway. A recent NPR/Marist poll found that nine in 10 consumers rarely or never return stuff they’ve bought online.

Justine Montoya, a caregiver in Los Angeles, buys all sorts of stuff online--baby formula, clothes, household goods. She estimates that she shops online twice a week. “It’s just so easy--you click a button, and it’s on its way,” she told me.

In the last few months alone, I bought an $18 smart watch from Wish.com that I will probably never use, a second Kindle because it was on sale and I am worried my first Kindle is going to die soon, an electric space heater I no longer need, and a pair of wireless earbuds that I had hoped would allow me to charge my iPhone and listen to music at the same time, but that instead just fall out of my ears whenever I put them on. I also bought, on Amazon, a (used) book about hiking in the Sierras for $1.99, only to find the exact same book in a box of my stuff in my parents’ basement. I didn’t return any of it.

In 2017, Americans spent $240 billion--twice as much as they’d spent in 2002--on goods like jewelry, watches, books, luggage, and telephones and related communication equipment, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which adjusted those numbers for inflation. Over that time, the population grew just 13 percent. Spending on personal care products also doubled over that time period. Americans spent, on average, $971.87 on clothes last year, buying nearly 66 garments, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association. That’s 20 percent more money than they spent in 2000. The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000.

All told, “we are all accumulating mountains of things,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He sometimes asks his students to count the number of things they have on them in class, and once they start counting up gadgets and cords and accessories, they end up near 50. “Americans have become a society of hoarders,” Cohen said. Montoya said she has more stuff now that she has started shopping online: “It’s easier to accumulate more, and it’s easier to spend more.”

At the same time we are amassing all this stuff, Americans are taking up more space. Last year, the average size of a single-family house in America was 2,426 square feet, a 23 percent increase in size from two decades ago, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The number of self-storage units is rapidly increasing too: There are around 52,000 such facilities nationally; two decades ago, there were half that number.

Of course, not everyone is a part of this hoarding revolution. There are people who can’t or don’t shop online, because they don’t have credit cards or because they are barely making ends meet. Only about 29 percent of households with incomes under $25,000 are members of Amazon Prime, according to Kantar Consulting. Some people are embracing the zero waste movement, or have followed the example of the author Ann Patchett, who published a widely-circulated op-ed in The New York Times about how she resolved to stop shopping for a year. When she ceased buying things like lip gloss and lotion and hair products, she started finding half-used versions of them under the sink, and realized she hadn’t needed new things after all. “The things we buy and buy and buy are like a thick coat of Vaseline smeared on glass,” she wrote. “We can see some shapes out there, light and dark, but in our constant craving for what we may still want, we miss life’s details.”

But most Americans are not curtailing their shopping habits. And as consumers demand cheaper clothing, electronics, and other goods, manufacturers are spending less to make them, which sometimes means they fall apart more quickly. The share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within five years grew to 13 percent in 2013, up from seven percent in 2004. Cheap clothes might lose their shape after a wash or two, or get holes after a few tumbles in the dryer; electronics become obsolete quickly and need to be replaced. While some of this stuff can be recycled or resold, often, it ends up in landfills. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, Americans put 16 million tons of textiles in the municipal waste stream, a 68 percent increased from 2000. We tossed 34.5 million tons of plastics, a 35 percent increase from 2000, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Over that same time period, the population grew just 14 percent.

“Sometimes, people sit down and cry when they see the amount of garbage we produce in a day,” said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, which handles recycling for West Coast cities like San Francisco. Centered in America’s tech capital, Recology has seen an increase in discarded electronics, including products with lithium batteries, Reed told me. In 2016, a lithium battery fire burnt down a waste management facility in San Mateo.

The 16,000 students who live in dorms at Michigan State University left behind 147,946 pounds of goods like clothing, towels, and appliances when they moved out this year, a 40 percent increase from 2016, according to Kat Cooper, a spokeswoman. The university packs up these goods and donates to them to its surplus store, so that incoming students can buy used, rather than new, stuff. In recent years, dorm cleaners have been finding so many packages of unopened food and toiletries that the university started a program to get students to donate leftover food and toiletries to local organizations like food banks when they move out. This year, it collected 900 pounds of personal care items and 4,000 pounds of nonperishable food items to donate. Pomona College has seen the volume of packages delivered grow by 325 percent in the last 12 years, according to Patricia Vest, a spokeswoman; it, too, asks students to donate unused goods to a resale program. This year, it diverted 42 tons of clothes, furniture, and office supplies.

The Internet has also made it easier to recycle some of the stuff Americans buy and no longer want. Online consignment shops like thredUP and Poshmark help people buy and sell clothes from their closets. Secondhand stores like Goodwill have moved online, too, selling the growing pile of goods they get on the Internet.

But the ability to easily get rid of stuff may be making people feel a little better about buying things they don’t need, and motivating them to buy even more. On a recent weekday, I stopped by the massive warehouse where workers from Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin sort donations to Bay Area stores. Some of the stuff that’s been donated has never been used. Near the front of the warehouse stands a rack of clothes with their original tags on--a $245 blue Nicole Miller cocktail dress, $88 Kit and Ace pants, a pale green J. Jill blouse. “We are seeing items that have been barely used or not used, because when people shop online, it’s a lot of work to return it,” William Rogers, the president of the Goodwill, told me. Rogers himself is guilty--when we met at the warehouse, he dropped off four wall sconces he’d bought a year ago on Amazon. He had tried to put them up, decided they didn’t look good, and brought them to donate.

Secondhand shops can’t resell all of the donations they get. Cline estimates that 85 percent of the clothing that is donated to secondhand stores ends up in landfills every year. Just nine percent of plastic that ends up in the municipal waste stream gets recycled, according to the EPA, and only 15 percent of textiles get recycled. It can be difficult to take apart clothes and re-use the fabrics, Cline said, so lots of clothing in the waste stream gets sent to the developing world, used for rags, or sent to a landfill.

Fifty years ago, the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick coined a phrase for these “useless objects” that accumulate in a house: “kipple.” In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for the movie Blade Runner, he theorized that “the entire universe is moving toward a state of total, absolute kippleization.” Kipple reproduced, Dick wrote, when nobody was around. The ubiquity of mobile devices and the ease of online shopping have made Dick’s prediction come true, with one small tweak: Our kipple does not just multiply on its own, every time we turn away. We grow it ourselves, buying more and more of it, because we can.

[mikemortgage]

The Latest: More than a dozen arrested on looting charges

WILMINGTON, N.C. — The Latest on Florence (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

Authorities cracking down on looting and break-ins in one North Carolina county impacted by Florence say they’ve arrested more than a dozen people. Three of those arrests came after an online undercover sting operation.

News outlets cite Jacksonville police as saying officers saw a broken-out front window at an athletic shoe store but the investigation had to be delayed during the storm’s passage — and until they could contact the owners.

Police say the suspects were using an online app to sell stolen goods to undercover officers. The three were charged with felony breaking and entering, looting, curfew violation and other charges. They say they recovered dozens of pairs of stolen shoes, as well as clothing, many of the items with security devices and tags still attached.

The three men were all given $70,000 secured bonds. It’s not known if they have attorneys.

——

6:30 p.m.

Two interstates closed to traffic in eastern North Carolina because of river flooding from Florence likely will remain closed for at least another week.

Transportation Secretary Jim Trogdon said Thursday that 16 sections of Interstate 40 and Interstate 95 are still flooded, preventing major traffic from getting into and out of the city of Wilmington. While some motorists are using alternate routes to reach the southeastern North Carolina coast, Gov. Roy Cooper urged displaced residents to stay away from areas that still lack power and other necessities.

Trogdon says he anticipates the interstate routes won’t re-open until the flooding recedes on the Cape Fear and Lumber rivers. He says that means I-40 won’t be cleared to traffic until next weekend at the earliest, and I-95’s reopening could be longer.

Cooper says more than 700 roads remains closed. Authorities are warning against road travel in all or parts of 17 eastern counties.

——

5:20 p.m.

Officials in the place where much of the floodwaters from Hurricane Florence will reach the Atlantic Ocean are preparing for a flood like they have never seen before.

Georgetown County Administrator Sel Hemingway said Thursday it is too early to know exactly how high the water will get or how much land will be flooded starting next week.

Water from five different rivers flow through the county to the ocean.

Hemingway says in the worst-case scenario, more than 10 per cent of the county’s 61,000 residents might have to evacuate. Flooding could cut off U.S. Highway 17, the main road north out of Georgetown.

Hemmingway says officials should know more by this weekend.

Authorities planned to start handing out 15,000 sandbags Friday.

——

5:20 p.m.

Officials from several state agencies are urging motorists not to travel in areas of southeastern North Carolina because many roads remain impassable due to flooding and road conditions which continue to change.

The N.C. Highway Patrol and others say travel is not recommended in Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, western Craven, Cumberland, Duplin, Harnett, Hoke, southern Johnston, Jones, Lenoir, New Hanover, Pender, Robeson, Sampson, Scotland and southern Wayne counties.

Patrol commander Col. Glenn McNeill Jr. says that while some routes are starting to open, motorists should avoid travel in flooded areas unless necessary and should never drive on flooded roads.

Officials say that GPS systems are less reliable in the aftermath of a hurricane when conditions are frequently changing. As such, motorists should avoid completely relying on their GPS systems for roadway information as these systems may re-route them to a road that is closed.

——

4:05 p.m.

At least 41 deaths have now been attributed to Hurricane Florence.

North Carolina Department of Public Safety spokesman Keith Acree says four additional deaths were reported Thursday to the state and occurred in Duplin County. He says a 74-year-old man and his 22-year-old granddaughter died Monday of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a generator that was inside the home.

An 87-year-old woman and her 81-year-old husband also died. Acree said they had been living without power for several days.

The death toll in North Carolina now stands at 31. The other deaths occurred in South Carolina and Virginia.

——

4:05 p.m.

Utility workers continue to work to restore power to North Carolina residents who lost electricity due to Hurricane Florence.

North Carolina’s electric co-operatives reported Thursday statewide outages have dropped to about 38,000, down from a historic high of 326,000 on Saturday.

Duke Energy reported more than 70,000 customers without power in southeastern North Carolina. Of those, more than a third, or about 24,500, are in New Hanover County, which includes the city of Wilmington.

——

1:45 p.m.

Hundreds of roads in North Carolina remain closed due to the effects of former Hurricane Florence.

The N.C. Department of Transportation said on its Twitter page Thursday that nearly 750 roads are still closed. At one point as many as 2,200 were closed.

The closures include sections of Interstate 40 and Interstate 95. Also, U.S. Highway 258 in Kinston was closed Thursday due to flooding, and the department said drivers should plan for U.S. Highway 70 to be closed as the Neuse River continues to rise.

U.S. 70 is one of the major routes from Raleigh to the coast.

The department also said U.S. 421 at the New Hanover County line is now closed.

——

1:45 p.m.

Major flooding on North Carolina’s Little River earlier this week swallowed buildings and forced evacuations. Now that waters have receded, property owners along its banks are returning to survey the damage.

The destruction brought by the flood was evident Thursday in Spring Lake, North Carolina, a town of 13,000 near Ft. Bragg. The banks were littered with bricks and debris from a motel that collapsed after flooding swept the earth out from under it.

Next door, a convenience store owner inspected damage to his shop where turbulent floodwater had knocked down shelves and left silty mud on the walls and floor.

Heavy rain from Hurricane Florence earlier this week caused the Little River to swell well beyond its banks.

Before National Weather service gauges measuring water levels stopped working, it had reached 36 feet (10 metres), a record-breaking major flood.

——

1:45 p.m.

Many groups are helping to feed victims of Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, but one stands out for the sheer volume of meals it has distributed: World Central Kitchen.

The chairman of the New Hanover County commissioners says the non-profit organization came to Wilmington four days before the storm. He says it has provided 90,000 meals so far for shelters, first responders, the National Guard and the people working in the county’s emergency operations.

Chairman Woody White said the group has started bringing meals into communities via food trucks. White says World Central Kitchen’s work has been “remarkable to witness.”

Celebrity chef Jose Andres founded the non-profit, which is best known for serving more than 1 million meals last year in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

——

1 p.m.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster says the state’s financial losses from Florence are estimated at more than $1.2 billion.

McMaster provided the damages estimates Thursday in a letter to the state’s congressional delegation.

Among the breakdowns included in McMaster’s letter is an estimated $125 million hit to South Carolina’s agriculture industry. The governor noted that some of the estimates were based on damage resulting from Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

McMaster has requested federal disaster-recovery funds be made available for 23 of South Carolina’s 46 counties.

He wrote the damage from Florence in the northeastern area of the state “will be catastrophic, surpassing anything recorded in modern history.”

——

10 a.m.

Duke Energy has activated a high-level emergency alert at a retired coal-fired power plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, as floodwaters from the nearby Cape Fear River overtopped an earthen dike and inundated a large lake.

Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said Thursday that the dam containing Sutton Lake appears stable and they are monitoring the situation with helicopters and drones to react to what was called “an evolving situation.”

The lake is a former cooling pond at the L.V. Sutton Power Station and is adjacent to three large coal ash dumps. A landfill at the site ruptured over the weekend, spilling enough material to fill 180 dump trucks. Coal ash contains arsenic, mercury and other toxic heavy metals.

——

8:30 a.m.

A section of Interstate 95 in South Carolina has been closed because of flooding.

The Department of Public Safety said Wednesday evening that the highway was closed in both directions at the 175 mile marker because of high water levels at the bridges crossing the Great Pee Dee River. There are detours available for local traffic.

The decision to close the road comes less than 12 hours after the department had reopened a 9-mile (14-kilometre) stretch of the highway near the North Carolina state line, which had meant the entire highway was open in the state.

——

1 a.m.

Hurricane Florence is still wearing out the Carolinas, where residents have endured an agonizing week of violent winds, torrential rain, widespread flooding, power outages and death.

Frustration and sheer exhaustion are building as thousands of people wait to go home seven days after the storm began battering the coast.

Florence is blamed for at least 37 deaths. That includes those of two women who drowned when a sheriff��s van taking them to a mental health facility was swept off a road.

President Donald Trump visited North and South Carolina on Wednesday, saying the government will be there to help.

But evacuee and college student Evan Jones says he’s just ready for it all to be over. In his words: “I’m trying to get it all out of my head.”

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