Is An Upgrade Really Upgrading Anything?

My friend Monica just made fun of me for my phone. Which is appropriate. :)Look to the left, and you'll see a picture of my model.

In an age of iphones, I guess my phone is a little sad. Now, I don't mind it so much. It does what I need it to do...call people, text people. I don't have email on it, but I actually really appreciate that disconnect. But the trouble is, Verizon keeps messaging me that I am up for an upgrade and they keep tempting me with amazing deals and discounts and coupons. Any other year, as soon as I got the first message for an upgrade, I would have run to Verizon without even thinking of it. But now, that I am thinking of it, I think how silly that really is and how many old, perfectly good phones I have laying around. My phone works just fine. The buttons are getting a little worn and harder to press, but the phone is still doing its job.

Think of how many of us rush to get whatever phone is bigger and better when we have a perfectly adequate phone in hand already. It saddens me to think of how wasteful that is...to our environment and our sensibilities.

Next time you get that "you are up for an upgrade" message from your phone company, think about it. What are you really upgrading? And what are you wasting?

-Courtney