When I was in undergraduate school, I often had my clothes washed at a little place just off campus. They charged by the pound, and they hung your clothes on hangers. You could bring your own hangers if you wanted, or they would sell you hangers for five cents apiece. Five cents doesn’t sound like much these days, but for a poor college student who often deprived themselves of proper food in order to save money for quarter beer night, the nickels could add up fast.
The upside to all of this was the place would buy hangers from you for three cents a piece. If you brought more hangers than you needed, then they would give you a credit toward the cleaning bill. Even more notable was that you could bring them hangers anytime, with or without cleaning, and they would buy all you had to sell. I did not do it often, but there were a few times that I gathered hangers to sell to get some extra money.
Now that I actually own a house and have a washing machine, I no longer have to take my clothes out to be washed. Based on the amount of wash that is presently done in my house, I am not sure that I could afford to have my clothes washed and hung up. I have brought all of that “in house” now. I am really good at loading the washer and moving the clothes over to the dryer, but the folding and hanging often (ok, all the time) falls to Patti. That being said, we still have a lot of hangers.
We still have a lot of laundry that goes to the dry cleaners. The cleaners doesn’t specifically charge you for the hangers, but you know that the cost is built in the price. The cleaners that we now use will allow you to return the hangers. They will even give you a special hanger box to bring them back in, but they won’t give you any money for them. With two lawyers in the house, we have a lot of dry cleaning, and therefore, we amass a lot of hangers.
There is a special corner in our house where hangers pile up until they are needed or taken back. They are not in the special box from the cleaners because we never seem to have one of them. Without the cash incentive, they often sit for long periods of time or at least until the pile becomes more than we can stand, and then they are finally taken back. They are rarely thrown away because that just seems wasteful.
How many hangers get thrown away every year? How many similar recyclable items get thrown away every day because the cost or effort of recycling the items exceeds the individual benefit? I believe that I would be more aggressive in my hanger recycling if I could get three cents a piece for them. It has been quite a while since I drank quarter beer, but the money would probably buy me lunch once a month.
We shouldn’t demand a benefit for recycling items that can be reused or turned into some other useful item. We should recycle because it is the right thing to do for the future. Doing the right thing is not always the easy way, but it is always the right way. Sometimes things are easier said than done. That is true for everyone, especially those of us way up in the CHEAP SEATS!
This column was originally published in the January 20, 2012 edition of the Hamilton County Herald.
Bill James is a criminal defense attorney and co-founder of the James Law Firm with offices in Little Rock, Conway, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. He can be contacted at Bill@JamesFirm.com.