Now, How About Recycling That Tin Can?

What do we do with all of the worthless things we win and find? We put them in our shop and hope that someone will buy them for 1 measly Neopoint. We donate them to the Money Tree so that they circulate amongst us even more. But most of all, we discard them. You, me, everyone.

The problem is that there are just too many worthless, useless items now. Sure, one or two of them would be ok, as long as we don't happen to be carrying too many items. We could hide them in a corner of our Safety Deposit Box and let them collect dust. But even that box has limits, and frankly, I'd rather use it for something I really want to keep, not for something I have nothing else to do with.

Furthermore, how long will the sources of the raw materials last? The Kreludan Mining Company refused to comment on how much longer they can pump out the ores from which parts of those useless prizes are made. The same was true of the other companies that were asked. We may have enough material to pollute our world for many more years, or we may not.

We need a way to recycle all of this refuse. I am proposing a recycling plant, which would preferably be located on Kreludor. Kreludor is, afterall, the source of our waste. This plant would be operated and maintained by our pets. Each pet would spend 24 hours working in the plant, doing which ever job they have chosen. While they would be in the plant, they could not participate in any events outside of the plant, such as battling in the Battledome. After a 24 hour shift, they would be sent home. It must be understood that working at the Plant would be voluntary, and no pet would be obliged to work there. I understand that some owners might enjoy the experience of watching their pet clean up our mess, while some owners might be horrified to even think of allowing their pet to do something so messy. After all, there is a Beauty Contest to be won!

Just think about this for a second. The friendly Plant Foreman visits the Shop Wizard every once in a while, and buys up a shipment of useless items, say, 20000 Old Rotten Left Sandals. This shipment is then delivered to the Warehouse.

In the Warehouse, the employees spend their time separating, sorting, storing, and delivering this shipment to the Disassembly Shop. They are required to include any items, that were donated to the Plant, which match the shipment type. Donating useless items would be strongly encouraged, as it saves everyone time and money.

This shipment is then transferred to the Disassembly Shop. Here, each pet is assigned an item, which they spend 24 hours carefully taking apart and sorting the raw materials so that they can be reused. It has been estimated that 24 hours are required to safely disassemble a given item. For the proposed shipment, this would mean that 480000 disassembly hours would be required to reduce the shipment to it’s basic components.

These raw materials are then moved to another warehouse, which is used to store these materials until an order comes in. Here, our pets would be busy storing the material, and maintaining accurate records of inventory while performing the duties of a salesperson. Yes, the greatest challenge to this whole idea would be the shopkeepers and factory owners. They would no doubt insist that we prove that this material is the same quality as the raw material they normally use.

So what is in it for you? Well, the most important benefit would be much cleaner streets. You would no longer have to discard your useless items, and you may just be a few Neopoints richer if the Plant Foreman decides that he wants to recycle the item you just happen to be selling.

Your pets would greatly benefit from this as well. Our Grarrls and Skeiths would no longer have the pleasure, or displeasure, of eating cheap, useless food instead of those Gourmet buffets. While working in either of the warehouse or in the Disassembly Shop, they would be learning new, transferable skills.

In the warehouses, as they process incoming and outgoing shipments, they would have to be constantly learning. This could have the effect of increasing their Intelligence, the probability of which would increase if they acted as Sales Reps in the second warehouse. In both warehouses, they would also have to move crates from place to place quickly. Not only could their “Move” increase, but they might also become stronger, the latter being more common. The Disassembly Shop would provide our pets with another experience. They would be required to creative innovative ways of taking apart our junk. This could easily increase their Intelligence. However, at the same time they would have to be patient. Patience leads to endurance, and endurance increases their health points. As a further trade off, though not a common one, the pets may also become faster as they try to finish their task on time. On top of all of this, knowing that they are helping Neopia., our pets would usually become very happy pets, though they would also be hungry, but that can always easily be remedied.

Finally, given that an average shipment included 20000 items, and that each shipment took a week to recycle, over 1 million items would disappear from Neopia every year. This would put a dent in how much the Neopets servers have to store. Seriously, there are thousands upon thousands of people who are selling useless items for 1NP a piece. All of this would slowly disappear for only a small infusion of Neopoints (given the example above, just over a million spread out among quite a few people) into our economy, maybe even causing the items in question to increase in price. This concept of the Foreman purchasing items from the Ship Wizard would not unbalance the game, especially if the Plant Foreman was completely random in what item he chose to recycle in any given week. Furthermore, the people who would benefit the most from this endeavour would be the newbies, who often must subsist on the worthless items for quite some time before they accumulate any sort of wealth. For the more experienced folk, this Plant could offer the opportunity to receive a trophy for something as simple as the number of times their pet(s) had volunteered at the Plant.

A Recycling Plant would benefit everyone, and would therefore be an excellent addition to Neopets.