A Speed-to-Landfill Index

My wife and I are testing out a "bonus" knife set that came with a gift of meats.  The meats were high quality, generously portioned and nicely packaged.  We have been surprised to find that the knife set does not match the quality of the primary product.  I guess we shouldn't be surprised, since experience should tell us that come-ons rarely live up to their hype.  Still, I wonder if the company knows that our decision to make them a place from which we buy in the future has been negatively influenced by these knives.

When Jason Peters wrote of Dreaming of a Tight Christmas, he asked for less shit.  Less for the landfill.  The advent of these knives has us wondering about how to get rid of them.  The new year isn't even hear, but we're faced with the sticky dilemma of what to do with these still-shining, capable looking, sharp items.  Do we attempt to pass them on to a thrift store?  That seems harsh since we can't figure out how anyone would ever get any value out of these items.  Do we wrap them in a box and regift them to the garbage truck?

It made me wonder how many other gifts aren't going to last the week.  How many toys are already broken beyond repair?  How many spurious gadgets, inedibles, and shoddy items are being bagged, canned and set at the curb?  The need to be out-of-sight, because obviously the person who purchased them, however well meaning, must've been out of their mind.

So I wonder if there shouldn't be a new grade for products, like a Good Housekeeping seal or an energy efficiency rating, for speed-to-landfill.  Call it the Speed-to-Landfill Index (SLI) We have product testing laboratories, how about a product demise testing laboratory.  Products could be judged on function (this can't be used for its intended purpose or any other purpose known to humans, animals, plants or rocks), aesthetics (this is too ugly to see light of day), fragility (destructible at a glance from across a crowded room while still in its protective packaging), and lethality (it is making me sick).

Products could be labeled with SLI just as cigarettes are labeled with warnings.  Except in this case, the product would be hazardous to the planet's health.  Products with extremely short time-to-landfill would be required to be covered entirely with the SLI label so as to be entirely unrecognizable.  Individual items inside the package would each have to be labeled, if inconvenient, by hand.

For now, I've got to finish taping up a package.  The refuse man cometh.