Thursday, May 10, 2012

consumer stats

found this interesting consumer habits statistics thing off an infographic about walmart's green policies.
 some of these stats are really interesting. an average of 59 garments (which doesn't include shoes, i think) purchased a year is 5 items a month; i know i'm a bit under for that. but the one that REALLY got to me is the stat that u.s. citizens throw out an average of 83lbs of clothes a year. what?! i throw away a couple pounds only (mostly socks and underwear) because i donate everything else. so who are the people throwing away over 100lbs of clothes to balance me out?

anyway, how about you? are you pretty average?

4 comments:

Angeline said...

I'm with you...I can count on one hand how many items of clothing I've purchased so far this YEAR. I do donate more often than I'd like (not because I don't want to donate, but I feel so wasteful having bought those items in the first place) but I only throw away damaged items and used underwear.

It also surprises me that people replace their TVs every 2.5 years (and before that ever 3.6). My parents had their last TV for about 20 years (even the secondary TV in their bedroom, I can only remember them having two, ever, in over 25 years). Unless you're throwing things at your TV and breaking them, why in the world would you replace a perfectly good piece of furniture?!?

step said...

the tv thing also really surprised me, but we now have 4 lcds in the house, and i feel like 10 years ago we had all tube tvs (i really can't remember though)? i think the tv stat might be slightly off because a lot of people in the last few years have switched to lcds, but IN NO WAY can i see us buying another tv in two years!! now that we have the "new" tech, we're staying with it. there's no need to upgrade every few years.

Rip said...

Its like the old sayin goes "they just dont make things like they used to" - Most of this can be attributed to cheaper manufacturing and more crap breaking/wearing out faster. Lbs of clothes probably is counting shoes, but even still thats a ton of clothes...

My LCD TV (Vizio) died in just a couple of years, so its not surprising to me that 2.5 years people replace TV's. You don't repair them anymore because cost of repairing is so high compared to just investing in a new TV

step said...

@rip that's totally true. tv's really don't cost that much anymore, why would anyone fix one?

all of our stuff is getting more replaceable so people just throw stuff away without a second thought.

they used to have a ton of shoe cobblers to fix your old shoes! they're practically impossible to find these days, and honestly, would it even be worth it to re-sole your old shoes?