Why not one universal charger for cell telephones?
For the past six months or so I’ve been poking around the Pirtle household looking for a folder containing important, but not critical, personal documents.
I carefully put all related pertinent information in the folder to make sure the various pieces of paper didn’t get lost.
Then, I misplaced the folder.
As I have searched for the folder, going through the family filing cabinet, boxes of photos, financial records and just stuff, I have been thwarted in my main mission, but I have found all manner of other stuff.
Like the old family photos I told Mom I would get back to her two years ago.
Like a black tube with a Ford label that must go to something (maybe my car) as I felt it necessary to save but have no idea what it does.
Like the long, long, long lost keys to the lock on the storage barn.
Like at least six different cell telephone chargers.
Why can’t we pass a law requiring cell phone manufacturers to produce one, and only one, electrical charger for cell phones?
These are not nuclear reactor control panels. They are wall plug-ins that squeeze electricity into cell phones.
Cell phones, of course, are manufactured to pretty much cease functioning for some reason after a couple of years.
Sometimes you get lucky and a phone will stay in service for several years. The missus had one phone that continued to work for seven or eight years. That, as I’m sure you know, is way the exception.
When the phone dies, the technology the phone companies tell us is always far advanced, requiring a new phone.
And, a new charger. And, if you are like many, a car charger.
Usually you get a new wall charger, but a car charger is extra and oooh so costly.
Should you lose your wall charger, stop by the bank for a line of credit before you inquire as to price.
But, once you get home with the new phone and prepare to give it the required original charge, what’s the first thing you do?
Well, you unplug the old charger and throw it away or, as at our house, stuff it into some storage area or receptacle.
They seem to gravitate to the same place like garter snakes, eventually producing a large mass of tangled wires with awkward plug-ins flopping around and connectors of endless varieties sticking out everywhere.
The phones you can recycle about a zillion places, but what about the chargers?
This is one of our problems in America. We waste things that don’t need to be wasted.
Take all those discarded chargers and consider the amount of valuable metals in the middle of those cords and even in the electrical socket prongs. Even the big clunky plastic plugs are made from petroleum products, thereby using up more of our ever-diminishing supply of compressed dinosaur.
The amount of natural resources, unnatural resources, labor, packaging and such all added together is just incredible.
Think about it: How many times have you changed cell phones over the last 15 years?
What happened to those chargers?
No wonder we have such a gigantic national trade deficit.
Congress should just pass a simple law: all phone chargers must be exactly the same in function and connectors and totally interchangeable. Period.
•••
As I grabbed the leaf blower to clear off the back deck for the third time in about six days last week, I wondered if any leaves were going to be left to provide the spectacular fall beauty we look forward to annually and nine out of 10 years get to enjoy.
What this summer has lacked the extreme heat and extreme drought of last year, it has still been awfully, awfully dry for the past several weeks with shrubbery and trees negatively impacted.
A second straight stressful season has a cumulative effect.
Last week’s much needed heavy rain will undoubtedly provide some relief, but I’m kinda fearful we may miss a lot of the beauty of the annual color changing.
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