You probably didn’t know this, but this blog is more than a technical blog. It is also your source for solving all the world’s problems. For example, there is the age old question, “Where did the matching sock go?” Did you notice the extra amount of lint in the dryer? Problem solved.
Today I noticed something interesting in the cupboard. We bought some Arizona Iced Tea Mix. It’s the powder stuff you mix with water to produce a refreshing drink. I noticed that not only is it packaged in a tin, but right there on the tin it lets you know that it is a collectible tin. Really? Wow! I can’t wait to get the whole set!
So that got me thinking, it makes a ton sense to label it as a collectible. Otherwise that tin becomes an ordinary piece of garbage when the little tea packages run out. But now, my friends, it is a wonderful mantle piece ready to be displayed with pride to other collectors. Perhaps I will be the one to puff out my chest and brag how I found the rare Peach Tea Tin with the misprint logo, eliciting a bit of envy among other collectors.
But why stop there. I notice that candy bars produce a lot of litter on the streets. Why not have our Snicker bars come in collectible wrappers? Or that impossible to break plastic shell that electronic devices are packaged in? Maybe if we made every newspaper issue a special collector’s edition, we could really reduce our landfill clutter.
The end result is that we will have moved from a centralized landfill structure (and all us geeks know centralized is bad! Booo!) into a decentralized peer-to-peer (good! yay!) landfill structure. It is the Napsterization of garbage...er collectibles (though perhaps Bittorentization is more accurate, but Napsterization sounds better).