Sustainability, planned obsolescence, landfills and everything in between

[Lomax]

It's actually far-far worse than what I tried to describe of course; manufacturers of everything from washing machines and car engines to smartphones and computers have taken the lock-in concept to dizzying heights. Everything, and I do mean everything, now seems to have either a serial PROM of some sort, or an RFID tag, which will actively prevent the end user from swapping, repairing or rebuilding the products they have bought. "Computer says no". Try sticking a T420 battery in a T430 for example. Even LCD panels are now whitelisted in the BIOS. Printer cartridges were one of the first items that used this active fraud technology but it's spreading like a ******* wildfire. And they use other tricks to force us to trash perfectly serviceable electronics, like the glued shut case with a glued in battery of my Xperia phone. Yes, you can replace it, but only with methods that are as likely to irreparably damage the phone. Why not paint the plastic instead of making it in the right colour, so it looks badly worn after just a few months. Costs a few cents extra in manufacturing, but kills the second-hand market. Cast the electronics in epoxy resin, why don't you, and offer me a replacement for 60% of the cost of a new machine. Get some stupidly fragile parts installed in critical places - like the plastic door latches on washing machines. I'd like to to see the engineers' faces in that design meeting. "Umm... With all due respect, the rest of the door is made from cast aluminium, glass and stainless steel, a plastic latch seems like an unnecessary weak point". Manufacturers even think they have the right to remotely brick or cripple a device without warning, just look at Apple's behaviour for a master class in what can only be described as theft - they take the expensive product you have bought from them away from you by arbitrarily retiring it from afar. Piles upon mountains of the stuff, absolutely gargantuan in size. If I was a millionaire I would hire a bunch of dumper trucks, fill them up with bricked iThings and go dump the lot on the Apple campus' lawn.

IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE LIKE THIS. We are ******* drowning in our own **** here. [censored] *** ***** [censored] [censored] **** [censored]. Rrrrrrhhhaaaaaaaaaa!

[TRS-80]

You are preaching to the choir, brother.

For all the reasons you state, I have been hoarding old tech like some sort of Techpriest, or, that faction in Fallout that collects the old tech (forget what they are called now), lol

Not just ThinkPads, but things like washers and dryers. Well not hoarding those (too big) but the ones we have are old school steel Whirlpool plain white top loading washer (front loading dryer) which run for years without trouble. These newer machines are not only ridiculously over-priced, but seem like fancy junk to me.

We could go on and on down the line, so much of "new" tech is like this. Luckily, with crowd funding and hacking renaissance, we are seeing more and more little guys filling market needs (at least in tech stuff). Hopefully this decentralization trend continues, and spreads to other market segments. Something like that is the only hope I personally have for the future.

I mean, the established players have gotten so fat and complacent, and are now charging so much for so little, that they have opened the door to competition. So, it's only a matter of time, I suppose...

[Lomax]

Hundreds of thousands of... 50 MILLION TONNES world wide, every year. Just imagine that, that's like a mountain of thirty-three million cars, all electronic waste, every twelve months. Absolutely unbelievable - and clearly unsustainable.

[dr_st]

Get some stupidly fragile parts installed in critical places - like the plastic door latches on washing machines. I'd like to to see the engineers' faces in that design meeting. "Umm... With all due respect, the rest of the door is made from cast aluminium, glass and stainless steel, a plastic latch seems like an unnecessary weak point".

Hah. I can totally identify. I just had one of these replaced on my dryer. It seems to be the most commonly searched replacement part with that model. They charged almost $30 for a piece probably worth $1, but it's still better than replacing the dryer, isn't it? Kudos to them.

[Lomax]

It seems to be the most commonly searched replacement part with that model. They charged almost $30 for a piece probably worth $1, but it's still better than replacing the dryer, isn't it? Kudos to them.

It wouldn't have cost them $1 to design it so it would last until the heat death of the universe, but I'm not sure you understand how this works; that little plastic part, and other similar designed-in weak spots, play a key role in the lifecycle management of any big ticket item. Philips can retire their dryer models almost as effectively as Apple can their iThings, by simply declaring the model obsolete and refusing to sell any more spares. And since that includes the flimsy plastic piece that holds the door shut (and allows the machine to run), it's off to the landfill. Have you ever visited such a site? It is truly humbling to walk through the canyons of dryers stacked four layers deep - all of them with broken door latches and other basic faults. Followed by washers, followed by fridges, followed by microwave ovens, followed by flatscreen TVs, followed by computers - as far as the eye can see, all rotting away in the rain because no-one knows what to do with them all. And that's the best we can hope for - sadly the reality often looks like this:

https://makeresourcescount.eu/wp-conten ... STQEYD.jpg

This is not the consequence of some simple mistake, or over zealous penny pinching, it is the plan, from before the product leaves the drawing board - this is how they want the world to work.


FORUM warning:
picture(s) WAY too big, tags removed. Please read the Forum Rules, especially Section 5: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14339

[Lomax]

When I moved away from home at 17 I was allowed to take the family's old TV with me, a 22" Luxor CRT that didn't have a remote. That TV was bought long before I got my first computer, because it's what I used to plug my ZX Spectrum into, so it was already a decade old by then. I kept using it until I moved abroad aged 25, and it was still working when I gave it to a friend - some twenty years after it left the factory. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, great picture and sound, composite video input - though you did have to get up off your butt to change the channel, and it didn't do satellite/cable. I'm sure it would still be working today at 40+ years, and would probably fetch a bomb on eBay for someone's retro man cave. Our direction has changed, and we keep going faster and faster, too fast to even read the warning signs at the side of the road. Does anyone really believe exponential growth can carry on indefinitely, or is this just a game of generational musical chairs, where everyone hopes they will be dead before the music stops?

[axur-delmeria]

@Lomax

Dunno if the photo is from my country or not, but the scene's a familiar sight, unfortunately.

[dr_st]

This is not the consequence of some simple mistake, or over zealous penny pinching, it is the plan, from before the product leaves the drawing board - this is how they want the world to work.

I understand this completely.

The other side of the coin is that a certain level of planned obsolescence, when incorporated into most industries feeds a cycle of spending and fuels continuous economic growth. Economic growth depends on people spending money. Without this, if you build things that never break and things that can never be improved on, well, a lot of people would be jobless pretty fast.

It's all part of the religion of capitalism, but one cannot deny that it has been largely responsible for the economic boom of the last century.

However, there is an issue of sustainability, as you put it. Go overboard with trashing things, and the balance might be disrupted. That's why reduce/reuse/recycle initiatives are gaining traction as well.

Personally, I try to find some middle ground. I try to repair my computers / replace parts to keep them running. I am probably way too crazy about this and end up clinging to those that should have legitimately been retired / disposed off already. With smartphones I'm a bit like this too, but less. I replaced broken screens and dead batteries, but when it comes to multiple failures, or a dead mainboard - I usually give up and replace the device. Still, when I did so last - I ended up going for a manufacturer-refurbished unit of my exact same phone, which is a little better for the environment, I guess.

I take my clothes to have them repaired if it is a local damage, if repairing it won't cost more than a new item, and if it it still presentable after that.

For my large home appliances - same approach, really. If it is a failure of a specific component - I try to get it replaced/repaired. Things I can just get the part for and do it myself - I do: like the aforementioned door latch, or a broken plastic cover for my coffee machine. Just last year our microwave turntable shattered after 10 years, and I had to tell my wife that, no, we don't need to use it as an opportunity to get a brand new microwave - I will just get a new turntable for 1/5 of the cost of the device, and there will be one less fully functional unit in a landfill.

If I cannot do it myself, but there are professionals who can - I call them. I've had a broken airconditioner turbine replaced; the dryer belt (multiple times), and probably other things I don't necessarily remember. I only gave up on the old dryer and replaced it with a new one after the motor died, and the repair guy told me it would cost more than half of the cost of a new unit, labor not included. Could I have opted to repair the old one still for the benefit of the environment? Probably, but I didn't feel like it.

Same with my coffee machine. It served us well for more than 5.5 years. Towards the end it was leaking off and on and had intermittent pressure issues. I opened it up but found nothing obviously wrong, and so I continued using it, with the above limitations. A few months later it started blowing the breakers, probably due to an internal short. Likely something that could have been repaired (maybe not by me), but instead I decided to thank it for its years of service, and got a brand new one. And now I'm enjoying better coffee, no leaks and a quieter operation.

Our direction has changed, and we keep going faster and faster, too fast to even read the warning signs at the side of the road. Does anyone really believe exponential growth can carry on indefinitely, or is this just a game of generational musical chairs, where everyone hopes they will be dead before the music stops?

You nailed it. I don't know. As said, there is definitely more awareness now about issues of sustainability than there was 30 years ago. Is it enough? I do not have the expertise to judge.

But I do have very fond memories of Captain Planet and the Planeteers from the early nineties. Well, mostly Captain Planet. The Planeteers were always a bunch of loser teenagers.

[TRS-80]

Sorry, but I am no longer buying this notion that "economic growth" is necessary or even desirable. It only seems to me to benefit the architects and beneficiaries of the ponzi scheme. The other 99% of us (and the environment, etc.) are probably worse off.

In addition it goes against simple physics and logic, infinite growth based on finite resources. Impossible. It is, as you say dr_st, just another religion.

If you study most typical industries for some time, you will realize (at least I have) that many of the things we "do" are not because they are the best way, but rather they are done that way because it is someone's "business model" to do so. I have noticed this applies in almost every industry.

[Lomax]

Thanks everyone for indulging my rant, and for adding to the conversation - and apologies @axur-delmeria for polluting your beautiful country with our garbage

I have a few propositions:

1) Make it a law that any item that has been discarded can also be reclaimed by anyone - if it's in the bin, the skip or on the dump, it's yours to do with what you like. Today waste disposal companies are bound in their contracts that everything must be destroyed, and to take anything with you from the recycling yard is a crime. I have seen a whole truck load of brand new Ericsson mobile phones still in their shrink wrapped retail packaging get crushed and shredded simply because they were the wrong colour. I have seen a mountain of vintage electronics, including several pallets full of $1.5k Sennheiser headsets, tube amplifiers, vintage computers, loudspeakers, ECG machines, reel-to-reel tape recorders, test & measurement equipment, mixing consoles, an absolute cornucopia of all manner of desirable stuff get similarly destroyed, with a massive big wheel loader crushing and scooping it all into a giant crusher to prepare it for landfill. I wanted to throw myself prostrate on the ground in front of the wheels like Arthur Dent and implore them to stop the madness, but I was there in a professional capacity and had to bite my tongue. I have seen people dumping things in the skip right in front of me that I would happily have paid hundreds of dollars for on eBay, and had guards come and pull me away as I tried to fish it back out. These kinds of experiences have made it difficult to appreciate shopping in any form, and I'm now more proud of the items that I've rescued from the jaws of death than anything I have worked to pay for. Like the Sennheiser HMD-410 headset I managed to nab and hide under my coat while they were attacking that pile from the other end. One pair out of hundreds that died that day, rescued by me, and still as mindblowingly great as the day they were made (in Austria, thank you very much).

2) Make it a law that any manufactured item which contains parts prone to wear out (e.g. batteries, motors) must be openable without the use of special tools. No glue, no proprietary screws, no secret hidden latches. If you own the product you also own what is inside it, and denying you access to that is basically fraudulent.

3) Make it a law that every item that is sold must have clearly printed on its packaging who manufactured it and where. That goes for food, clothing and electronics as for everything else. This won't make sense for complex composite objects like cars, but it does for the spare parts you buy. Might make you think twice about buying an expensive new Sennheiser headset when you realise it's nowadays really just a sticker to cover up the Foxconn label.

4) Reform the tax system so that multinationals have to pay taxes where their profits are made; registering off-shore is not an option for most people or businesses, but all the multinationals do it. This tilts the balance absurdly in favour of these giants (as if they weren't already advantaged by their sheer size), which stifles innovation and competition - supposedly the very underpinnings of capitalism.

But of course for such legal measurements to be implemented and effective we need something else first: a functioning democracy that isn't beholden to the large multinationals. And that, I suspect, is where we hit a dead end - for this ratchet mechanism can only ever move in the other direction.

[TRS-80]

Yes, you get there in the end. The "law" is in the hands of the very people who perpetrate such schemes, hence my lack of faith in it. I am afraid that no solutions (to these sort of problems, anyway) will come from within the very system that benefits from things just the way that they currently are.

I think decentralization in all things is the only sane/sustainable way forward. Otherwise it's just going to keep slowly but steadily getting worse until it's the old "boot on your face, forever." It was actually stated recently at World Economic Forum (or some such) that by 2030 (2050? I don't remember), "you will own nothing, and you will be happy." They are not even bothering to hide it any longer.

Unfortunately, human nature dictates that things will need to get much, much worse, before they can start to get better (if they ever do?). Don't listen to me though, I'm a doomer.

[dr_st]

Sorry, but I am no longer buying this notion that "economic growth" is necessary or even desirable. It only seems to me to benefit the architects and beneficiaries of the ponzi scheme. The other 99% of us (and the environment, etc.) are probably worse off.

In addition it goes against simple physics and logic, infinite growth based on finite resources. Impossible. It is, as you say dr_st, just another religion.

If you study most typical industries for some time, you will realize (at least I have) that many of the things we "do" are not because they are the best way, but rather they are done that way because it is someone's "business model" to do so. I have noticed this applies in almost every industry.

You should read Yuval Noah Harari's books - Sapiens and Homo Deus - he presents some of these ideas in a rather clear way, though too wordy at times and filled with excessive examples. I guess listening to his talks might be better.

Since this has gone way off-topic (myself at fault too), I will now lock this thread, split and re-open.