Throwaway Consumer Culture

JonnyT

JonnyT

JonnyT

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Cambridge
Anyone else a bit fed up of being preached to by charities and politicians about how we all need to do more to protect/save the environment, yet on the other hand they say or do nothing about the throwaway consumer culture that exists today, from the part of the manufacturers making repairing items extremely difficult or prohibitively expensive.

Take for example my Philips AquaTouch shaver; I purchased it several years ago for a not insignificant fee (it was certainly north of £50). Now, like the clumsy oaf I am I dropped it on Friday while getting ready to go out and damaged one of the circular foils. Ok I thought, I'll buy some replacements... £37 for three little foils and cutting blades; a whole new equivalent shaver is not that much more! How is this helping the environment?
 
It had annoyed me for ages, my dad was one of those that repaired everything he could. It's rubbed off on me as well, my phone for instance live it but the battery is useless. Cost far too much to get it replaced works out better value to replace the whole phone. Anything with a battery in should be user replaceable.

Cars should be built to last, be easy to do just force manufacturers to offer longer warranties 10 years should be the minimum.

In fact you could do it with a lot of things increase warranty length and the minimum terms and conditions.

Need to ban plastic packaging as well, I do my best to but as much as I can from markets where you get it wrapped in paper and nothing more.

It showe when it's bin day we have a tiny black bin ( for non recycling) and even that's never full, yet the neighbors have the big bin and the lid is always wedged open.
 
There was a time when Singer famously bought up old sewing machines so they could destroy them. Ford bought up Mk4/5 Cortinas for destruction because of poor Sierra sales when the model was first introduced and more recently we had the infamous "Scrappage Scheme" which willfully destroyed hundreds of thousands of perfectly serviceable vehicles in order to boost new car sales/Bank loans.

(This also severely damaged the independent workshop sector, whether this was deliberate policy or simply an unintended consequence i do not know)

So nothing is new here.

Unfortunately we still have Governments/Economists who cannot think beyond the consumption based economic model (Along with the continual growth model)

Until we can break free from this and develop a different economic philosophy, things will remain the same.
 
Funny you should mention tools, my dad has his dad's old tools, some of which are lovely old saws with wooden handles. You would be shocked at the price he got quoted to reset and sharpen the saws.
End up buying some new ones and just keeping the old tools as keepsakes.
 
It's quite rare that I buy anything that isn't essential these days. I didn't buy a thing for Black Friday and I'll probably not buy myself anything for Christmas despite wanting a few things.
 
My opinion on this matter, is that you should NOT be allowed to manufacture ANYTHING, unless you have proven it does not impact environment, and that you have a disposal/recycling setup in place for the old crap you manufactured.

Consider this:- Coca-Cola, makes about 4BILLION drinks a day, think about that, its likely 90% of those are plastic, so imagine, ~3.5 BILLION Plastic bottles, all day, every day, year on year on year, and what have they been "forced" or made to do? NOTHING, as long as their shareholders are fine, bugger the Turtles and sea birds choking on their vile plastic product packaging.

Makes me rage. Coke are a vile, vile corporation, none of their drinks actually DO any good. Just harm for humans, and harm for the environment.

It's hardly a stretch to say "you make it, you dispose of it".
 
Governments are obsessed with GDP so being able to repair cheaply is not in their interest and corporations/businesses are obsessed with profits and would rather resell their products with minor improvement every year than have people repairing 5-10 year old ones. Things like smart phones even have planned obsolescence built in as they stop supporting OS security updates after a few years and make it difficult to replace the battery once it has deteriorated.

What government is going to encourage economising when it will lower the holy grail of GDP? they would get murdered politically. I mean look at Brexit people bricking themselves over a minor (probably short term) reduction in GDP in order for us to get our national sovereignty back and become a self governing nation again.
 
robj20 said:
Funny you should mention tools, my dad has his dad's old tools, some of which are lovely old saws with wooden handles. You would be shocked at the price he got quoted to reset and sharpen the saws.
End up buying some new ones and just keeping the old tools as keepsakes.
Click to expand...


AIUI, Saws were actually one of the first manufactured products to be deliberately designed to have built in obsolescence.

Your Dad needs to learn how to do the sharpening himself which is what the original owner would have done.

(And like Chainsaws or any other cutting tool. The trick is little and often)
 
Trappi$t said:
My opinion on this matter, is that you should NOT be allowed to manufacture ANYTHING, unless you have proven it does not impact environment, and that you have a disposal/recycling setup in place for the old crap you manufactured.

Consider this:- Coca-Cola, makes about 4BILLION drinks a day, think about that, its likely 90% of those are plastic, so imagine, ~3.5 BILLION Plastic bottles, all day, every day, year on year on year, and what have they been "forced" or made to do? NOTHING, as long as their shareholders are fine, bugger the Turtles and sea birds choking on their vile plastic product packaging.

Makes me rage. Coke are a vile, vile corporation, none of their drinks actually DO any good. Just harm for humans, and harm for the environment.

It's hardly a stretch to say "you make it, you dispose of it".
Click to expand...

That's easy for the consumer to fix though, don't buy anything they make. At the very least we should go back to glass bottles, and like Japan i think it is. Offer money back when you deposit the bottle at a bottle bank.
I know its easier said than done, plus price is often a massive issue. Take milk for instance its so much more expensive in glass bottles than the card or plastic ones.
 
JonnyT said:
£37 for three little foils and cutting blades; a whole new equivalent shaver is not that much more! How is this helping the environment?
Click to expand...

In many cases, due to bulk production, overheads, etc. having spares is actually a lot more costly to a manufacturer than it seems - often 1 unit of spare parts is essentially the same cost to them as one unit of the complete product unless they've got a setup to salvage parts from returns, etc. which obviously for hygiene reasons won't be done with a shaver.

It does annoy me though that there is an increasing movement towards making it harder to repair products especially with things like sealed batteries when there is no real good reason why they can't be replaceable, etc. (sometimes the motivation behind that is that they have a bit of a tantrum about not being able to control and profit from the spares market). (Also with a proper setup for it modern li-ion batteries are "95%" recyclable but often isn't implemented).
 
ttaskmaster said:
^ This +1.
YouTube up some videos on saw sharpening from Paul Sellers or Wood By Wright.
Same for his chisels, planes, spokeshaves, hollows & rounds, routers, and just about everything.

Old hand tools are soaring in price, because people are rediscovering the quality and longevity that used to be standard.
Click to expand...
Many old hand tools are a bit soft for modern materials.
 
ttaskmaster said:
^ This +1.
YouTube up some videos on saw sharpening from Paul Sellers or Wood By Wright.
Same for his chisels, planes, spokeshaves, hollows & rounds, routers, and just about everything.

Old hand tools are soaring in price, because people are rediscovering the quality and longevity that used to be standard.
Click to expand...
That's all well and good, but he wouldn't be able to do any of that, hes hands aren't what they used to be, holding a saw in its self is a task in its self.
I told him its not the end of the world they will at least last longer without use, we just gave everything a light coating of oil. Its funny seeing some of the tools in museums they're that old.
Got loads of these and the brace looks identical.
http://www.theluddite.com/auger-bits.html

A wood plane, that is totally made of wood with a metal blade in it.
 
JonnyT said:
Anyone else a bit fed up of being preached to by charities and politicians about how we all need to do more to protect/save the environment, yet on the other hand they say or do nothing about the throwaway consumer culture that exists today, from the part of the manufacturers making repairing items extremely difficult or prohibitively expensive.

Take for example my Philips AquaTouch shaver; I purchased it several years ago for a not insignificant fee (it was certainly north of £50). Now, like the clumsy oaf I am I dropped it on Friday while getting ready to go out and damaged one of the circular foils. Ok I thought, I'll buy some replacements... £37 for three little foils and cutting blades; a whole new equivalent shaver is not that much more! How is this helping the environment?
Click to expand...

I agree with your second paragraph, it's one of the main reasons I switched to a traditional "double edged razor" a few years ago. I was sick of paying through the nose for throwaway electric razors and cartridge blades. Proper razor blades are cheap, just as effective (I'd argue more effective after practice) and fully recyclable, and the razors themselves last a lifetime (I have some from the 1920's, 30's and 40's which work as well now as the day they were made).

With regard to your first paragraph, yes it is annoying but I think it's important that government continue to pressure us into doing more because a lot of people still don't get it.
 
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