Your Money Votes
As long as money makes the world go 'round, consumers have the power—whether they have $5 to spend when they walk into a store or $100 (see "Household Toxins," July 9, 2009).
One thing I have learned in 52 years on this planet is that it is way easier to accumulate stuff than it is to get rid of it. And it makes no sense to buy the super-size version of something that you won't use in 10 years just to save 25 cents. Because the apocalypse will be the nearby stream that overflows in the weather event that no one predicted, and you will be swimming in all the stuff that's typically stored in the cabinet beneath your kitchen sink… or basement… or garage.
If people exercised their power as consumers by buying only cleaning products like baking soda and vinegar, the world would be an entirely different place. (For instance, vinegar eliminates hard water scale deposits in the blink of an eye.)
A lot of the stuff we think we need is really entirely unnecessary. But then, Americans will buy anything (including endless phony wars marketed via the abstract ideas of patriotism and freedom). I know. I have done it. I have a house overflowing with stuff I don't know how to get rid of. I live in a gigantic storage unit.
One more thing: I try to avoid buying anything anymore that's packaged in clamshell plastic packaging—which includes just about everything in aisle upon aisle of every store in America—because I have nowhere to recycle it.
However, if I absolutely can't live without something that's so packaged, I returned the packaging to the company that provided it, with a note asking them to be responsible for their packaging. I spend a little extra money on postage, but I hope that, finally, some big company will lobby Congress to lift the restrictions on growing hemp in this country so that we can have a whole new packaging industry based upon a phenomenal plant rather than plastic.
Jacqueline Brook
Putney, Vt.
Paying Up for Union Bennies
I am writing in response to a letter by a writer (Letters, July 9, 2009) who refused to join his union while a graduate student at UMass because he objected to paying a fee based on income rather than a flat fee. With my one graduate degree, I can see that an income-based dues structure in a university setting can be more equitable than a flat fee, especially for those working fewer hours or earning a lower income. I find it objectionable that someone with two graduate degrees felt entitled to receive the protections and benefits (including tuition waiver) from an organization he refused to pay for.
Andrea Fox
via email
