This morning I was faced with a dilemma. My almost-new toaster decided not to pop up my slice of toast due to some unknown malfunction which led me to wonder, what does one do when one’s toaster is toast? As a child I remember the television repairman being a regular visitor to our house. The sight of that sci-fi-looking picture tube he unearthed when he took off the back of the set used to amaze me. And I swear we had the same stereo console for about 20 years.

My mother used to take all of our appliances to the repair shop at one point or another, too. I can still see the toasters, crockpots and radios lined up on metal shelves with their bright yellow tags attached— and the old man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he took them apart. Which brings me back to my initial question. Do people still get things repaired or just chuck it out and buy a new one?

Unfortunately, I think most people do the latter for two reasons. 1) It is probably cheaper (or comparable in time and money spent) to buy a new toaster than to have it repaired and 2) there are hardly any appliance repair shops to get things fixed anymore. I have to say, if it were not for the fact that my toaster is less than 2 weeks old, I would probably be shopping for a new one right now. But I am now faced with the task of having to pack it up and send it back to the manufacturer at my own cost and being toaster-less for weeks on end. Whatever happened to the appliance repairmen and their dusty old shops who could fix anything for a few bucks?

I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, but when I read last year about a mass of plastic garbage the size of Texas that has been floating around the Pacific Ocean for the past few years, I found myself rather concerned. I had never really given a second thought to all the plastic that I regularly toss in the garbage (because it doesn’t pass my city’s insane recycling guidelines).

Upon its invention, consumers were wowed by the durability of plastic, but does anybody want that milk carton they bought 40 years ago to still be floating around somewhere? I began to think about all the plastic around me and tried to come up with ways to repurpose it rather than throw it out. I try and buy stuff with less plastic packaging, though that is quite difficult, in case you haven’t noticed.

The biggest step I’ve taken is to stop using plastic bags when shopping. It was quite an easy transition, once I found the right bags. Actually, I didn’t find the right bags, so I designed my own. I’m a graphic designer, so I’m really picky about the way things look and I just did not want to be hauling some ugly bags around town.

Which is sort of the genesis of this blog. I found out through the website that sells my bags (www.minusbags.com) that there are a lot of people like me with the same concerns. So I’ll be writing about things that are environmentally relevant and things that are not. And perhaps someone will find it interesting.