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

[SilverSolder]

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.

Yes, I agree with this analysis.  The cost of actually changing a vehicle (time, risk, and $$$) can make it worth spending "theoretically too much" to fix.

[james_s]

Yes, I agree with this analysis.  The cost of actually changing a vehicle (time, risk, and $$$) can make it worth spending "theoretically too much" to fix.

It almost always makes sense provided you have taken reasonable care of the rest of the car. I've never understood the "but it costs more to fix than the vehicle is worth". So what? With few exceptions a car is not an investment, you're always going to pour much more money into it than you get back out later if you sell it. That's especially true if you buy brand new cars, you lose tens of thousands of dollars in value. I don't even know how I'd manage to spend that much repairing my car. I don't care how much I could sell it for because I'm never going to sell it, I'll spend the money to maintain it and just keep driving it until someone hits me and wrecks it again.

[Cyberdragon]

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.

I don't see a problem with LED bulbs either...

*Buys cheap bulbs from dollar store like most average folk*

They seem to last just fine...

*porch light burns out after just a few years*

Ok...nevermind...

 

[bd139]

Some of them are pretty crappy to be honest. Usual failure mode I see is the thermal compound being applied poorly and one of the LED chips burns out. That is as always due to them being really shit bottom rung units made to a price point so they can be sold to idiots in dollar stores / pound shops though.

Our race to the bottom economics are the reason these things exist. Plus you make more money shipping volume than quality so the incentive to make barely fit for purpose products with a high margin and guaranteed repeat customers is higher than single shot products.

Real problems that we need to deal with are these though:

1. Disposable kids toys
2. Printer cartridges
3. Retail and food packaging
4. Deep supply chains

Edit: just on a point here. I buy Philips bulbs and they’re all nearly 10 years old now and still good. The aforementioned idiots actually bring me their £1 light bulbs and then ask me to fix them because they’ve seen an oscilloscope sitting on my desk 

[tom66]

That's stupid, and I can't comprehend that. And I've never seen that.

Perhaps the idea is not something the Chinese would accept but these are everywhere in the UK and the very idea of throwing away a perfectly reusable Li-Ion cell and DC-DC converter, with all the plastic casing components after just two hours of use just disgusts me.

[Zero999]

Obviously, cheap nasty signal use products such as torches with non-replaceable batteries and disposable phone chargers should be banned.

I don't see any problems with hygiene and children's toys, which should be designed to survive many wash cycles at 90^oC and being sterilised in chlorine solution.

Food packaging isn't quite so clear cut. Sometimes using plastic packaging increases the shelf life, thus cutting waste, but it's often unnecessary. It depends on the product so isn't something which can be easily regulated.
https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/plastic-reduction-wrap-food/

[bd139]

Have you seen the state of children's toys these days?

Look at hatchimals. 20% of the packaging is plastic waste. Then once the toy has hatched, the shell goes in the bin (another 20% mass), then the damn thing fucks up after a month and goes in the bin. £40 down the shitter. I'm glad mine all like tech now which is mostly recyclable thanks to WEEE regulations. Oh and then there's shit like aquabeads which is basically a whole plastic wrapped in non recyclable films in a box made of plastic which goes in the fucking bin. And I haven't started on high value lines of collectable crap figures. Go watch a TV advert break on CITV or something to get an idea of the crap.

I got lego when I was a kid. That was durable, reusable, creative and educational and in fact 30 years after the fact I sold most of it to people who wanted to reuse it.

[donotdespisethesnake]

I can't really see how to legislate for "repairable". Who is to judge that? And even if products are theoretical repairable, who is going to check that the spare parts actually are available and at reasonable cost from the manufacturers? Will companies have to commit to supporting all products made for X years, including those of businesses they acquire?

I guess that it happen like WEEE. Some fine words are printed, the net effect is to add a cost/red tape burden to manufacturers, a pain for the smaller ones and the larger ones will just absorb the cost by paying money to some third party. Consumers will then be told actually neither the shops nor manufacturers accept e-waster, you are supposed to take it the council site, promised kerbside collections never actually get done.

The council transfer to the waste to private companies who just ship it to the third world and dump it in a field, then just set fire to it.

The reason products became non-repairable, is because modern mass production techniques have heavily optimised for material cost and assembly time. Disassembly is no longer the reverse of assembly. Reversing that trend would make products more expensive, and reduce sales. Manufacturers will make the calculation that profits will be better if they continue selling cheap non-repairable stuff, and paying some sort of "repair tax".

[Zero999]

Reversing that trend would make products more expensive, and reduce sales.

Perhaps that's what's required to protect the environment? More expensive products, less stuff being made and less waste.

[bd139]

That's inevitable anyway with a growing population and a fixed quantity of resources which will increase in scarcity at some point. As a species we like to stick our fingers in our ears or point at the sky when that is mentioned but really it's just going to get pretty ugly pretty quickly one day. Recycling is really just a parachute fall instead of a free fall because it's not 100% efficient.

This is all propelled by the attitude of "who gives a fuck I'll be dead then" while filling their cars up with dead dinosaurs, driving home and switching on the air con powered by more dead dinosaurs

[unknownparticle]

LED lamp life is very much dependant on the type of light unit it's installed in.  If there is free air flow around the lamp, it is likely to last a reasonable time, although I doubt any will last into the 10's of thousands of hours that is often claimed.  The lamps I've had fitted in light units with restricted air flow have never reached even a 1000 hours, some as little as a few hundred.  What will ultimately dictate longevity is the dreaded capacitor in the PSU, the LED chips themselves, if of good quality could potentially go for 1000's of hours, but the caps will prevent that.  Any  LED's I've had in outside fitments do about 6 months before they fail.  Overall, incandescent bulbs have LED's beat for longevity in my experience, but at a cost!

[HobGoblyn]

While not a repairable point as such, I recently bought a new dyson hand held vacuum cleaner.

None of the accessories from my older model fitted, very very slightly different, the only reason for this that I can see  is that dyson has deliberately slightly altered the fittings  so that people are forced to chuck all the old accessories away and buy new ones.

[unknownparticle]

Dyson prices are just outrageous!!  Circa £400 or more for a vacuum cleaner, hairdryer or fan, WTF!!!  Full marks for their PR, advertising and marketing crap that  persuades people to pay those prices though, very clever!!

[AndyC_772]

I can't really see how to legislate for "repairable". Who is to judge that? And even if products are theoretical repairable, who is going to check that the spare parts actually are available and at reasonable cost from the manufacturers? Will companies have to commit to supporting all products made for X years, including those of businesses they acquire?

There's some simple, easily achieved improvements to be had here, which wouldn't be at all difficult to describe in legislation.

For example, not too long ago, the phone in my pocket had a sliding battery cover which was trivial to remove. The battery was clipped into place and could be easily swapped out with no technical skill whatsoever. Nowadays almost every phone on the market has an integral battery which cannot be replaced without special tools and a risk of permanent damage to the phone - and there's no good reason for them to be made that way.

Or, look at laptops. For years it was entirely normal to be able to replace the battery, upgrade the HDD, install more memory and so on. Now that's still possible in some models, but others are soldered and glued all in the name of making them fractionally thinner.

Last year my washing machine packed up, 13 years old (which was disappointing, but could have been worse). The component which failed was only available as part of the complete drum assembly, cost around £600 and completely uneconomic. That wasn't so bad; the real problem was finding a replacement machine which didn't have a sealed drum and a design life expectancy of 5 years or less.

All these limitations could easily be overcome with minor design changes to the products in question. Manufacturers don't do it for economic reasons, and because for each of them, being the one manufacturer to do so would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Apply legislation that's the same for everyone, though, and that objection goes away, and every consumer benefits.

[SiliconWizard]

Dyson prices are just outrageous!!  Circa £400 or more for a vacuum cleaner, hairdryer or fan, WTF!!!  Full marks for their PR, advertising and marketing crap that  persuades people to pay those prices though, very clever!!

Which allows them not to directly compete with the low-cost gear market, which is the real clever part here.
It's not just about margin. It's about market positioning.

[thinkfat]

It's not regulations that make cars expensive and unreliable. It's the "race to the bottom" that you get everywhere within our economic system. You don't get the "best" product, you get the product that makes the most profit for a manufacturer. Regardless of safety of operation as I might add. Example: Boeing. You know how manufacturers recall products for safety hazards: Only if the expected cost of lawsuits outweighs the cost of fixing the defect. Regulation steps in there and forces manufacturers into complying to certain standards. In the Boeing example, the authority got too tangled up with the manufacturer and failed their own processes. But that doesn't void the need.

The cars we can buy now are the result of manufacturers desperately trying to differentiate in a replacement market: Everybody who can afford it already has a car. So we're urged to buy a new car in ever shorter intervals to keep this business model afloat. It's not sustainable and manufacturers are trying to find replacements: Transportation as a Service is one such model.

I wouldn't be able to fix a carburetor. Or adjust it in a satisfactory fashion. But in the past you'd be able to call up an expert and have it done for money. The manufacturer will not do it, it's not in his interest (or you will pay from the mouth for it). Example: Apple doesn't fix iPhones. They coerce you into buying a new phone. It's not in their interest to extend the service life of their products. They want, need, you to buy a new phone. The won't rescue your data from a phone that fell into the toilet, they will provide a cloud backup service for money.

But nowadays it's becoming difficult to find an expert to fix your stuff, because the manufacturer makes it difficult on purpose. By withholding information and parts. There are people that can fix ECUs. There are people who could fix broken Teslas with failing eMMC chips. It's difficult, but it can be done. If parts, documentation and tools were available. This is what the Right to Repair is about.

[unknownparticle]

Dyson prices are just outrageous!!  Circa £400 or more for a vacuum cleaner, hairdryer or fan, WTF!!!  Full marks for their PR, advertising and marketing crap that  persuades people to pay those prices though, very clever!!

Which allows them not to directly compete with the low-cost gear market, which is the real clever part here.
It's not just about margin. It's about market positioning.

Which is lying about the benefits and quality of the product. 

[Cubdriver]

LED lamp life is very much dependant on the type of light unit it's installed in.  If there is free air flow around the lamp, it is likely to last a reasonable time, although I doubt any will last into the 10's of thousands of hours that is often claimed.  The lamps I've had fitted in light units with restricted air flow have never reached even a 1000 hours, some as little as a few hundred.  What will ultimately dictate longevity is the dreaded capacitor in the PSU, the LED chips themselves, if of good quality could potentially go for 1000's of hours, but the caps will prevent that.  Any  LED's I've had in outside fitments do about 6 months before they fail.  Overall, incandescent bulbs have LED's beat for longevity in my experience, but at a cost!

What kind of LEDs are you running?  I have about 95% of my house switched over to them for better than 7 years now, and can't think of more than perhaps 1 or 2 failures.  Several are in outdoor fixtures (including fixtures that are turned on automatically at dusk and run for 4-8 hours per day, and have been doing so since 2012), and they have never failed.  Most are Philips or Cree, or Eco-Smart (I believe that's a Home Depot 'house' brand), and all, in my experience, have been near faultless.

-Pat

[james_s]

I have about a half dozen LED bulbs that are already >10,000 hours and still going strong. I can't comment on the "tens of thousands of hours" claim because I haven't had them long enough yet but so far so good, I've gotten my moneys worth, those heavily used bulbs have paid for themselves already several times over.

Regarding Dyson, they are expensive but I bought both my regular upright and my cordless vacuums on sale at a price that while higher than many vacuums, was quite a bit cheaper than they usually cost and they have been fantastic, I have very few complaints. I spent more overall on cheaper vacuums that I was never happy with and in retrospect should have just bought the Dyson in the first place, it's the only bagless vacuum I've owned that wasn't more trouble than it's worth. I can't speak for their marketing because I've never seen it, I don't watch TV and I don't think they are heavily marketed in the US. Someone I know who had one suggested I check them out so I did, 10 years later I'm still happy with my purchase. It's funny when I hear people who will drop $15k on an oscilloscope complain about a few hundred bucks for another tool you will use regularly for years.

[blacksheeplogic]

Real problems that we need to deal with are these though:
2. Printer cartridges

The eco printers with refillable ink bottles are difficult to find here and I were on close out sales. Why? - the self righteous everyone else should buy $300 printers but I will continue to buy the cheap $30 printer, after all 'I' can just throw the printer out when it runs out of ink.

If you want to actually do something about instead of this cheap political talk, go walk the walk and start supporting products like printers with refillable ink bottles and maybe if enough consumers start actually spending the extra manufactures will put more of these products back in the market.

My view is if your not supporting the cost of re-usability, stop preaching....

[blacksheeplogic]

For example, not too long ago, the phone in my pocket had a sliding battery cover which was trivial to remove. The battery was clipped into place and could be easily swapped out with no technical skill whatsoever. Nowadays almost every phone on the market has an integral battery which cannot be replaced without special tools and a risk of permanent damage to the phone - and there's no good reason for them to be made that way.

This has probably made negligible real difference. Basic market research showed consumers 'upgrading' there phones, they weren't replacing their phone batteries and using 10 year old phones. Sure a few do, But there's a ton of consumers who will say 'yea, if I had the option', but when they had the option..... different story, that what everyone else should do.

[MK14]

On reflection, I'm increasingly thinking, this (almost a) disposable car situation is probably where we have been headed to, for a large number of reasons.

Let's consider the cars side mirrors.

The mirrors of cars from many decades ago, were just that, 'mirrors'. If it needed replacing, e.g. a parking accident. You just needed to change the mirror glass (fairly cheap, £7 ?), or the complete unit, which was also probably reasonably priced, many decades ago.

These days, you usually have an incredible amount of functionality, crammed into the limited space mirror.

They can be electrically heated, electrically adjustable, flashes when someone indicates (part of the assembly), is electrically retractable/foldable. They can also, detect passing vehicles (electronically), have cameras in (I suspect, possibly lane change detection), and probably other stuff.

So, in order to put all that functionality into a relatively small space. You have to have assemblies, with lots of stuff on PCBs. Many motors, mechanical bits, sensors, heater(s), etc etc.

Therefore, instead of the old days, when it hypothetically can be repaired for £7 (guesstimate of many decades ago pricing), by buying a new mirror glass. The whole unit probably needs replacing, and it probably costs a small fortune, to get it repaired  (changed).

[CatalinaWOW]

On reflection, I'm increasingly thinking, this (almost a) disposable car situation is probably where we have been headed to, for a large number of reasons.

Let's consider the cars side mirrors.

The mirrors of cars from many decades ago, were just that, 'mirrors'. If it needed replacing, e.g. a parking accident. You just needed to change the mirror glass (fairly cheap, £7 ?), or the complete unit, which was also probably reasonably priced, many decades ago.

These days, you usually have an incredible amount of functionality, crammed into the limited space mirror.

They can be electrically heated, electrically adjustable, flashes when someone indicates (part of the assembly), is electrically retractable/foldable. They can also, detect passing vehicles (electronically), have cameras in (I suspect, possibly lane change detection), and probably other stuff.

So, in order to put all that functionality into a relatively small space. You have to have assemblies, with lots of stuff on PCBs. Many motors, mechanical bits, sensors, heater(s), etc etc.

Therefore, instead of the old days, when it hypothetically can be repaired for £7 (guesstimate of many decades ago pricing), by buying a new mirror glass. The whole unit probably needs replacing, and it probably costs a small fortune, to get it repaired  (changed).

The solution to this and similar problems is both simple and impossible.  Simple in that a standardized unit used by everyone would be relatively inexpensive due to large production volume.  Repair of the unit would be possible for the same reason (big market).    But this will never happen because everyone wants unique style and features to differentiate their car from the neighbors and competitors.

[james_s]

I hold out hope that eventually we'll have a trend toward minimalist cars, cars that are just cars, without the extra 1,400 pounds of silly gadgets to break. Things like these ridiculous power actuated tailgates that take 5 times as long to open and close as just manually lifting and closing the gate on the back of a wagon or SUV, it's dumb. Infotainment units integrated into the car are completely stupid, just provide a place to plug in a smartphone which everyone already has anyway and use that for navigation.

The lack of bumpers is probably the dumbest trend ever though. The entire purpose of a bumper is to absorb minor impacts and prevent damage to the expensive painted bodywork. They should be rugged plain black polymer over a sturdy shock mounted frame that protrudes several inches past the bodywork with an inexpensive and easily replaceable outer cladding. There is no excuse for these stupid jokes that modern cars have where the entire end of the car is a sacrificial structure and a minor parking lot bump can easily cost you thousands. It's purely form over function, it was great back when the law required bumpers that could absorb a 5mph collision without damage, yeah they were big and ugly on some cars so maybe 2.5mph that we had later is more reasonable but what we have now is ridiculous.

[SilverSolder]

Yes, I agree with this analysis.  The cost of actually changing a vehicle (time, risk, and $$$) can make it worth spending "theoretically too much" to fix.

It almost always makes sense provided you have taken reasonable care of the rest of the car. I've never understood the "but it costs more to fix than the vehicle is worth". So what? With few exceptions a car is not an investment, you're always going to pour much more money into it than you get back out later if you sell it. That's especially true if you buy brand new cars, you lose tens of thousands of dollars in value. I don't even know how I'd manage to spend that much repairing my car. I don't care how much I could sell it for because I'm never going to sell it, I'll spend the money to maintain it and just keep driving it until someone hits me and wrecks it again.

Sadly, rust is a big problem in some parts of the country, it ends up killing otherwise perfectly functional cars...