When I read posts like this, I always wonder what people did when they were kids and their bike had a flat. My Dad certainly wasn't always around to patch a flat, he showed me (and brothers and sister) how to do it and when we had a flat, we patched it. We certainly didn't have the money to go buy tubes. If an 8 year old can apply a patch that holds, then I'm sure an adult can do it.
It also seems bad for the environment to just throw away tubes with a small hole that can easily be fixed. Simply wasteful.