Trash or Treasure?

Is your inventory cluttered with old boots, broken toys and buckets of sludge? Got a box full of gross foods - Jellied Eyeballs and Slimesicles? Are you saving up cute but worthless Tyrannian Usukis and Faerie Bori Plushies? With so many daily giveaways and prizes throughout Neopia, millions of items are unused and unloved.

Rubbish has many riddles.

How many "Tyrannian Buzz" collectable cards are given out daily as battledome prizes?

Why is the cheap-as-chips "Ripped Moehog Plushie" given a rarity of 101?

How many minutes does it take the price of a mass giveaway to deflate from unbuyable to 1NP?

How do you write the plural form of "Squished tomato" and "Festering coffee"?

But the biggest question of all is:

How should you manage your unwanted items? Is there an eco-friendly solution?

If you really love bulking up your safety deposit box, you can scavenge for extra junk at the Meridell Rubbish Dump. Look for it just across the bridge from the Meri Acres Farm. The dump is managed by Charlie the blue Kacheek. He ecourages recycling and reducing landfill. Here are a few of Charlie's tips to clean up Neopia.

1. Make money

Sell, sell, sell. Put every unwanted item into your shop at the market rate - or below. Click the dropdown "Put into my shop" for each unwanted item. Turn your trash into cash. Well, increase your bank balance by a tiny amount. Every Neopoint counts, right? After a few million clicks, you could be earning hundreds of points a year in interest. Hmmm... maybe there are faster ways to make points.

2. Store stuff for later

Hoard, hoard, hoard. Click the dropdown "Put in your Safety Deposit Box" for each unwanted item. Faster still, store multiples via "Quick stock". Items that are worthless today might go up in value later. You could be sitting on a small fortune in your vault. Or not. Sure, there are cases where worthless items have recovered in value. What event could trigger a price spike for "Greedy Kadoatie Piggy Bank"? The launch of some rival banks? A mass escape from the Kadoatery? Anything is possible. But most items that plummet towards zero never rise much again, if at all. This is especially true for items continuously released via daily events.

3. Donate to charity

Give, give, give. Click the dropdown "Donate item" for each unwanted item. Faster still, donate multiples via "Quick stock". Give your junk away to someone else who will appreciate it. They will love it, right? Donated items end up as freebies at the Money Tree or the Second-Hand Shoppe. Actually, not everyone will snap up your "Ultra Fashionable Potato Sack" or used "Pile of Dung". The clutter is just relocated. Even in those smelly spots, most players are digging around for something better. Eventually, some newbie will end up with your "Diseased Mechafish", then be faced with the same issue of disposing of it. Hmmm... recycling the headache..

4. Adopt a munching machine

Eat, eat, eat. Adopt a pet from the pound that will eat your unwanted items. Then, click the dropdown "Feed to " for each unwanted item. Grarrls are voracious beasts that will eat any junk in your inventory. Of course, they will also eat your valuable items, too. Skeiths may be a better option. Feed them whatever you like. They never complain. They just eat. Even if Skeiths are bloated, you can keep feeding them as many items as you want. Their greed is unlimited. Garbage gone!

5. Exterminate

Delete, delete, delete. Just throw out everything you will never use. Click the dropdown "Discard item" for each unwanted item. Faster still, discard multiples via "Quick stock". The items appear to be vaporised and disappear from Neopia forever. No longer your problem. Perhaps, the rubbish really ends up orbiting around Dr. Sloth's Space Station. One day space junk might rain down onto Neopia harder than a thousand falling Faerielands? Who knows?

6. Go for the avatar(s)

Buy, buy, buy. Clean up the world and be rewarded for your efforts. Most people are too lazy to throw out their own rubbish, or want to earn at least a handful of points from it. Help them out, while helping your own avvie count at the same time. Buy up other people's junk and then discard it. The exact requirements for earning the rubbish avatar are unknown. But you do need to discard LOTS of items. THOUSANDS. A common method is to discard 50-70 items at a time via Quick Stock. There is no need to have a click frenzy and clean up the world in a day. It might cost you 30K or more to buy up enough junk to earn the Rubbish avatar. Never pay more than 1NP for junk items. Ignore those greedy shopkeepers pricing Poisonous Jelly at 5NP. For that price, you could buv five pairs of "Earrings of the Deep" (Rarity 101 - not that it matters). And you can spread out the clean-up effort over a couple of months.

Along the way, you are also certain to pick up the Packrat Avatar for having 1000 different items in your Safety Deposit Box. The Faerie Queen and her support crew will all be happy to see so many unloved items wiped off the planet's databases. Win, win, win.

The Neopian Calendar includes a Month of Storing and a Month of Collecting. Maybe the Month of Gathering would be the best time to add a "Day of Sweeping". Or maybe TNT could add a virtual broom to sweep out the clutter. Currently, once the value of an item falls too far, it cannot be auctioned. That same mechanism could be used to identify items as potentially unwanted. Users could choose to auto-delete all items of low value. Of course, you would still be welcome to keep as many buckets of sludge as you want!