Putting Away the Toys

Every day there is a new bunch of kids that get to play in the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe. There are dominoes and stuffed animals, playing cards and building blocks galore. Each game has intricate pieces that are essential to the whole. Unfortunately, when the kids enter the room, they become overwhelmed by the abundance and they take bits and pieces of different games and scramble them all together.

They roll around in the monopoly money, rip out pages of books so that whole messages in stories are lost, and throw plastic pellets at one another. When more than one kid wants the rocking horse, there is usually a bidding war and the domino offerings skyrocket.

At the end of the day, it’s clean up time, so the kids follow the rules and take all the toys that they used off the floor and throw them into this thing called the “clean up bin.” They leave in a hurry and don’t look back. The bits and pieces that once had a unique place inside of each game now lay scattered, stagnant, and misplaced inside the “clean up bin”.

The next day, an entirely new group of kids come to play in the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe. They are once again overwhelmed by the abundance of toys and they dig through the boxes, though none of the games are complete anymore. It doesn’t matter so much to them because they usually end up playing this weird game called “house”, where they and their pretend families compete to see who can collect the most stuff. They get possessive over their bits and pieces sometimes, and for some reason they always think other kid’s toys are better than theirs.

When the sun sets low, it is time to clear the toys again. The kids throw all of the mangled pretend possessions into the “clean up bin” and they leave.

Each new day, the bits inside the games dwindle and the “clean up bin” gets bigger and bigger, but kids never, ever think to play with things from the “clean up bin.” It is almost as if the things inside the bin are invisible. So the kids just play “house” with fewer and fewer dominoes every day.

Sadly, tomorrow, the kids who come into the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe will find that there are just empty boxes where intricate, unique pieces once made up whole games. I think the kids might then see the “clean up bin” in the corner, bulging with excess, crying for pieces of whole systems to be put back together. Maybe then they will try to put the games back together.

Our Earth is the biggest, coolest playroom in the universe. Every time we throw something into the garbage bin, it goes to a landfill and it rots away. Our earth is finite and each fraction of each system is as important as every card in the deck. Even a vanished two of spades would ruin every game that is played with the deck—our earth’s ecosystems are just as vulnerable, one piece of the puzzle gone and the image is never the same.

I think of the trash bin as an illegitimate term—it implies that there is a such thing as “away” when we throw something “away”—as easy as throwing our toys in the “clean up bin” at the end of the day.

Much like every red balloon that fades into vast blue canvas, some experiences are too beautiful to perceive the invisible, inevitable ends. But as each one of those red balloons has popped in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, so too will all material goods perish that we once deemed beautiful. Products that are made without future in mind are dead. They are not able to re-cycle. They hinder the chances of future generations to utilize them. They break apart natural systems, ecosystems, they take cards out of the deck, a future game of poker will never look the same.

There are amazing ideas about the transformation of the life cycle of products. One book is called “Cradle to Cradle” and it talks all about thinking in circular systems, rather than the linear production today that brings most products from “Cradle to Grave”. The book “Cradle to Cradle” is itself made out of corn plastics and the ink is soy-based and removable. After a certain amount of time, the ink can be washed off of the plastic pages and a new book can be printed on it. Genius.

I really, really recommend www.thestoryofstuff.com if you have not seen it. It’s amazing and worth the watch. Thanks for reading—Goodbye.