Think buying in bulk is a good thing? Think again, says Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com:
The whole system is designed for and biased toward people who live in suburbs.
They are big boxes surrounded by a sea of parking and if you don’t have a car you are really out of luck. But out there, the bigger the SUV, the luckier you are; you can fill it with bargains.
…It’s grossly unfair to poor people.
They often don’t have cars, and they often live day to day, so they can’t plan on buying a year’s worth of toilet paper. So they go to the bodega and pay ridiculous prices. Sure, it costs more to run a small store downtown than a big box, but the difference in price per unit that people pay shopping for small packages in the bodega compared to the big package in the big box is shocking.
A lot of it is wasted, a lot of it is second rate, and doesn’t save you any money at all.
We have this jug of dishwashing detergent from Costco that my daughter bought last year and it smells so toxic we won’t use it and I am taking it to the dump. This isn’t saving money. Katherine made suggestions for buying in bulk but, over time, some of them deteriorate; beans get stale, pasta gets bugs, and olive oil is better fresh.
If you don’t already have it, you can’t get it, in some ways.
