In message , at 13:26:53 on Sun, 7 Sep
2014, tim..... remarked:

never disposes of material things until they have worn out

....

It's the list of things that I do that the press regularly complains
that people don't do that wastes energy

How strictly is "dispose of" correlated with "throw away"?

It's also possible to sell things, freecycle/eBay/Gumtree, give to
friends/relatives/neighbours/Oxfam and so on.

Does a PC that'll only run Windows XP now qualify as "worn out", even if
the only thing which has expired is Microsoft's enthusiasm to continue
support (I could give numerous similar examples).
--
Roland Perry