In ChinaTracker today, MECunningham has penned a light-hearted, but very insightful piece on just what Americans can possibly do with all the trinkets and low-end goods they purchase from China:

...I walked around various gift shops and watched people purchase bag after bag of Disney products, I wondered what the ultimate fate of most of the goods would be...Eventually, their owners will have to make a choice: Keep moving them from one home to the next? Toss them in the Goodwill bag? Or just throw them out?

As the editorial observes, there are also other costs from importing toys and other nick-nacks from China:

Three decades of producing cheap goods for export has taken a considerable toll on China’s environment, even as some of the country’s population has enjoyed the fruits of prosperity. But the environmental cost doesn’t end when the products land on store shelves, as Americans continue to build bigger houses to store their stuff and require more landfills when all that stuff is no longer seen to serve a purpose. And we’ve also set an example for consumers in the rest of the world, who often aspire to the casual conspicuous consumption that Disneyland embodies.

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