RC/Duckshot,
The whole doughnut economics thing is not about giving people a free ride.
It's about trying to figure out a way we can jiggle things that people who are busting their butt can make a livable lifestyle and still keep from destroying the planet in the process by overproduction and over consumption.
Drive around your neighborhoods and look at all the stuff people toss out in the trash, furniture, etc....that's still usable just because it's out of style or not the latest model. That's the whole point of the approach not to pay people to set on the butts and do nothing.
Oh , back to the doughnut... We can get weeks or more on it. Good topic too...
Need vs want.
Obsolescence of a manufactured good directly affects demand for a replacement. Often as the original goes into the waste stream.
Recycling has been in my opinion a failed concept.
As a friend who worked at a place that recycled plastic noted , so much was out of line with efficiency as to render it more of a make work program than a value result.
When I lived in a city a year (approx.) recycling was offered. At a higher cost. We sorted and paid more for it to get hauled a different direction anyways.
I live by a landfill. Talk about a waste stream....
But stuff I set out by the road disappears. Folks scrounge and that is good.
Not as well or as much as other cultures with families specializing in what is scrounged , but anything kept out of the waste stream is generally a good thing.
Around here , you need good tennis or track shoes to get ahold of anything of value from near a trash receptacle.
I have recovered some things out of a private dumpster before.
A saxophone. New golf bag. (I don't care for golf , but it went to a good home) a lawnmower. A good low hour mower at that..
No good reason in my opinion for such waste.
Compost! The stuff we /"we" put in landfills is crazy.
Good soil areas are recognized and priced accordingly. The soil we could be building up in marginal to poor regions is our folly for not composting much of what we discard.
(There's the longstanding joke of imported Canadian waste around here going to landfills. As Canada is smarter than us for doing so..)
Not sure your figures , but we are often claimed as a great wasteful nation when it comes to food.
Having bussed and dished before becoming a cook , I believe it.
When I raised hogs competition existed for edible scrap. But where I'd worked earlier , boy did a lot of food get wasted.
We're not much better with municipal sewage and water either... A grave contrast here in the great lakes where sewage spills are tolerated , but heaven forbid a boater dump a toilet..
We don't get repair options on many new goods. We recall fix it shops for the mundane. But they faded with our evolving into a disposable society.
A lifespan can be generalized by a manufacturer , but in many cases it's not only limited , but a case of repeated consumption within a generation.
What the? 
