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New UK plan "could spell end of throwaway culture" (BBC News)

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james_s:

--- Quote from: rstofer on March 11, 2020, 09:40:50 pm ---As to "Right To Repair", well, sure, as long as it doesn't mean "Give away our IP".  In other words, the manufacturers might sell you a pre-programmed chip (for significant money) but they darn sure aren't going to give away the contents.  The other thing about "Right To Repair" is "Cost To Repair".  I don't get out of bed in the morning for less than $100/hour.  How much time can I spend on an obsolete cell phone before it becomes uneconomical.

--- End quote ---

It's not really about you though, less than $100/hr may not motivate you, but for the vast majority of the people the planet that is considerably more than they will ever earn and it may be economical to expend far more effort.

I don't really expect companies to give away their IP, but for the vast majority of consumer electronics I'm not sure the IP is really all that valuable. Much of the heavy lifting is done by open source stuff anyway and a lot of the firmware in simpler devices is something that any number of engineers could replicate if they wanted. Making programmed devices available is probably sufficient though, and even just having a schematic would enable a lot of repairs. My experience has been that the expensive, unobtainable and difficult to test custom part is rarely the problem.

CatalinaWOW:
Some alternate economics.  That twenty year old beater may only be worth $1500.  And a new transmission might cost $2000 or more.  So many will say it isn't worth it to put a new transmission in.  And I agree if you are a re-seller.  You will never recover your costs.  But if you are a user of transportation you already own a vehicle, which unfortunately doesn't work right now.  So your choices are to buy a new (presently working) beater for about $1500 which will have an unknown service life.  Or put $2000 into your beater and have a known good transmission and perhaps reason to believe other parts are working well.  Or put $25,000 into a new vehicle (which will also have higher insurance, licensing and other costs).  With this analysis it might well make sense to put that transmission in.

Seems like the "throwaway" moniker needs to be used with some care and precision.  From the 1970's to the 1990's personal computers made no sense to repair.  Because technology was moving so fast that by the time something broke you didn't want it anyway.  As performance growth slowed repairing/upgrading made more sense.  Improved efficiency in freezers and air-conditioners has reduced operating costs enough to make replacement make economic sense.  Adding costs to the disposal chain (which I believe is the mechanism for these attacks on throw away culture) may actually make sense.  But it puts you in the uncomfortable position of forcing continued use old, inefficient devices because it costs too much to dispose of them.  Dumping CO2 into the atmosphere to avoid dumping plastic in the landfills.

John B:
Cars are bad examples, as there is an incentive to replace and renew them in order to meet emissions standards. I can think of better examples of throwaway items:

Retrofit LED bulbs.
Single use battery banks for recharging phones.
Coffee pods.

MK14:

--- Quote from: John B on March 12, 2020, 01:03:54 am ---Cars are bad examples, as there is an incentive to replace and renew them in order to meet emissions standards. I can think of better examples of throwaway items:

Retrofit LED bulbs.
Single use battery banks for recharging phones.
Coffee pods.

--- End quote ---

The problem is, getting rid of such items, needs a huge world wide culture change. Getting that to occur, especially in the free world. Is not going to be easy.

In the UK, we were using/consuming and throwing away, far too many shopping, one time use (typically), plastic carrier bags. So, not too long ago, our government, introduced a 5p per bag, forced charge, especially in supermarkets. (The bags use to be free, in most supermarkets).
So, at least some people, bring long life, multi-use heavy duty bags, with them, to the supermarket, these days, in the UK.

This has reduced the consumption of plastic bags, very dramatically.

But the thing is, to "save planet Earth". We in all likelihood need to take considerably more dramatic action, across the board. This is not likely to be too popular, with the voting public. I'm not sure exactly what the solution is going to be.

Maybe we need to go back to living in caves, and use DNA engineering, to reintroduce dinosaurs. Then the next coronavirus, will only affect one of the (approx) 200 villager population communities, just like it would have. Back in the stone age, before jetting off to foreign countries was an everyday occurrence.
We can then ride the dinosaurs, instead of using cars. They would probably make great prehistoric war fighting machines as well. You can charge into battle riding your tamed dinosaurs, and crush your enemies, while using your zero emissions (ok, a bit of natural CO2, will be breathed out) dinosaurs 'tank' like battle machine.

Edit: typo corrected

james_s:
I don't see the issue with retrofit LED bulbs. I retrofitted my entire house from 2011-2013 and can count on one hand the bulbs I've replaced since then. Even the ones that have run dusk till dawn every night in my porch lights and other outside lights are still going strong. I bought quality bulbs from Philips and Cree and they have served me very well, and I didn't have to throw away all my nice fixtures. Additionally since they all use standard sockets, changing the light output, color temperature, or other characteristics is as simple as changing a bulb.

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