'End of life' provision for consumer goods, how do you manage this?

[EveSix]

To what extent do you feel responsible for what happens to your possessions once you decide they are no longer required by you and your family?

I usually do what I can to try to pass on things when I no longer need them; donate to charity shops, offer for free on FB / Freecycle/ Gumtree or leave on a 'help yourself' table in the verge outside my house. Disposing of things responsibly is definitely taking more effort, planning and consideration than acquiring stuff!

I buy pretty much everything second hand so while I feel like I'm not contributing much to the detrimental and unsustainable processes involved in manufacturing, transporting and distributing new consumer goods, I often find myself wondering how best to facilitate the safe and responsible disposal of things at the end of their serviceable life. "There's no 'out'," as the saying goes; you're never actually 'clearing something out', just displacing the responsibility for its disposal.

I'm just about to make a trip to our local tip. I hate it that there are things in my boot that are likely to go to landfill or for which recycling options are limited. I've got car booster seats which I cannot pass on for love nor money. The recycling centre manager told me that these make up a huge portion of what they deem unrecyclable hard plastics and they have a separate shipping container just for booster seats. I've got some snagged bodyboards, a couple of broken garden chairs and the plastic netting and guardpads off a trampoline. The list goes on. It's so grim to see all the stuff that ends up in the various containers, a sort of bleak consumerism graveyard. So much of it just can't be recycled or stripped for parts -it's just destined for landfill.

The point of this post, I suppose, is wondering how others are squaring this issue in their lives as consumers, both practically and ethically.

I'm definitely trying to avoid buying mdf or plastic as they are harder to repair and recycle. Will be tricky as I prepare for PFB!

If you have things nobody else wants you would be surprised how quickly they get picked up by a random passerby if you place them on the pavement outside your home with a note saying 'Please take'. I have really tidied up my shed this way.

If its something I already own, I use it till it falls apart, as it sounds like you have in your post. And then drop them off to the tip- I figure, I didnt know it wouldn't be recycled when I bought it and so its already made and broken so disposibg of it safely becomes the aim. And then if I am buying new to replace, I make more environmentally friendly choices- so for eg instead of plastic garden furniture, we have wood and metal, which does take maintenance but can be recycled at the end of its life. Car booster seats are one of those things where there's no real way to dispose of them once they're done besides the local tip, that kind of thing I just resign myself to as I know its an essential safety thing, so live with that I guess.

Thank you for responding. It's just good to voice the frustration with our waste problem sometimes. I suppose some of it is inevitable, and the fact that we reuse and prolong the life of many items is a positive thing.