RSSby Andy Rooney
We waste more in
Driving through the streets of any major city on the day the trash collectors come--or are supposed to come--is an experience the citizens of a hundred less prosperous nations would find difficult to believe. On trash-collection days, you pass enough furniture being cast out to furnish a four-bedroom house. There are couches, chairs, parts of beds, refrigerators and air conditioners.
When demolition experts move in on a building to be razed, they have no mercy, no sentiment. They tear it down, break it up and throw it away. They don't much care what they're breaking up or throwing out. It costs more to sort out the materials and save them than they could get for the stuff.
This practice of throwing things out seems wrong to me. In
In many depressed big cities around the world, there are shanty towns constructed of materials the residents have salvaged from waste dumps. If they had our waste heaps and trash containers from which to choose their building materials, they'd have shanty palaces to live in.
The homeless people who wander the streets of our big cities often have old shopping carts laden with bits and pieces of junk they've rescued from piles of trash by the curb. I understand their need to pick up stuff. When I see something good being thrown out, I often have the urge to stop and throw it in the back of my car.
As I was leaving my office recently, I noticed a note pinned to a somewhat battered computer. It read, "Please throw out." I wondered who had written the note and why they were throwing out what looked like a perfectly good computer.
I thought that the person discarding the machine must have been an executive who didn't want to waste a lot of time. The person knew something that I didn't know. Maybe the machine was too old to be repaired; to get it back in use would have taken more time and money than it was worth. I suppose it was a computer that no one liked to use any longer and wanted no part of it. If it cost twice as much to upgrade the computer, I guess it would make sense to buy a new one. I think I probably would have tried to fix the thing. That's why I'm not a president of a successful company or even an efficient office manager. I just hate to see anything thrown away.
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Wouldn't You Like to Be a Politician?
Andy Rooney
It's a good thing for all of us that there are people who want to be politicians because you couldn't pay most of us to take the job of mayor, governor or president of anything. Why are there people who want to do such difficult work? We're all glad they do, but why?
How Does Your State Rank
Andy Rooney
This column is sort of a cheat because I have a book called 'State Rankings 2009' that you probably don't have. I get to do an easy column once in a while, and this book has some fascinating numbers
The Newspaper Business Then and Now
Andy RooneyThe newspapers keep coming in my office. There's always today's paper before I've finished yesterday's and I get a lot of them. As you know, I'm an avid newspaper reader and I like all the little stories, so the paper takes me a long time to read.
How Does Your Brain Work
Andy Rooney
It may not matter to you, but I wish there was a better way for us to keep track of some of the numbers and information we gather throughout our lives. And then of course I'd like to be able to permanently forget some information. Sometimes I feel that we should be in more control of our brains.
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(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)
(c) 2009 Andy Rooney
About Andy Rooney
Andy Rooney born January 14th, 1919 is a writer, humorist, radio and television personality.
Rooney became most famous as a humorist and political commentator with his weekly broadcast on the CBS News Program "60 Minutes" since 1978.