Throw away society

My tumble dryer is circa 1979 - I only bought it because I was pregnant and panicked about drying nappies! It's had to have a new element, but is still going strong.

I suspect it's not as energy-efficient as the newer models, but I don't actually use it that often except in an emergency.

I realise that using a tumble dryer is not very 'green', however, I bought my first and only dryer in 1987 and it is still going strong. The door seal is no longer available so when it split I superglued it together and Bob's yer Uncle, job done . I may throw a party for its 30th birthday.....

For many years we used a hoover that FIL had found thrown out on the street - nothing wrong with it at all. We had a slimline dishwasher that had several bits replaced over the years before it gave up altogether.

Is the planet running out of anything it needs, crun?
It seems able to keep up with the needs of technology no matter how much is demanded of it.
[I could google I suppose, but I like asking you instead!]

From time to time, I seem to have heard that the world is running out of this or that, but then I dont hear about it again, so I presume a way was found around the problem, or some more of something was found.

I don't like the throw away society, so I was delighted when the engineer came to look at my 11 year old LG washing machine (which had smoke coming from it) and said he could repair it. So far, it has only needed the pump replaced. It now needs a replacement board and a new drive. 5 of my 6 grandchildren have lived with us over the last 15 years, so it has been well used.
I also had my Kenwood mixer rebuilt when the motor burned out (it was more than 20 years old), and it was made to look like new.
Things just aren't built to last or be repaired these days.

The other point I forgot to mention is fashion.

If manufacturers know that a product is likely to be thrown away when people get bored with it, then it can be an uncompetitive waste of money to design it to last any longer than it takes the fashion to wear off. In the case of electronic equipment though, many of the developments that have led to miniaturisation and an increase in power have also improved reliability.

Shortest lived appliance I ever had was my first dishwasher. I had saved up about 3days worth of washing up, loaded it as soon as the nice JL men had gone and the machine went "Whirr, clunk!" and died. They sent me a new one but I had to wait 3days until they next delivered in this village. And I still had to do all that washing up.

This is usually the cue for somebody to start muttering something about built-in obsolescence, but it's just the inevitable consequence of economic growth.

Growth is made possible by the use of automation to produce more output with the same amount of labour (contrary to the protestations of the Luddites). However, some functions are able to be automated, and others aren't. Production is easily automated because it consists of a series of repetitive predictable tasks in a controlled environment, repair however, is less repetitive and predictable so it can't easily be automated.

Since one person's growth in living standards is another person's increased labour cost, growth makes labour intensive work progressively more expensive relative to the automated tasks. Eventually you reach the point where manufacturing a new product is cheaper than repairing the old one.

The automation and cost reduction of electronic equipment has been achieved by integration on a massive scale. Electronic circuits that were once built from components soldered into a circuit board are now fabricated directly onto a slice of silicon using lithographic techniques. Even in the 18 years since I was designing radio there has been a revolution, the circuit boards that once contained hundreds of components are now little more than a mechanical structure to mount a handful integrated circuits on. Very cheap, very small, very high tech, and very unrepairable.

Six weeks does sound a bit extreme, though. When my telly kicked the bucket, Currys sent a man out to plug in a new circuit board a few times before giving up and replacing it, but there was no fault finding process or wielding of test equipment and soldering irons as there would have been in the past. In the days when someone came out to your living room and spent an hour swapping valves, a telly cost many week's wages, not just one week's.

The same argument applies elsewhere too. The private sector of the economy tends to be biased toward functions that can easily be automated (manufacturing TVs, cars, washing machines, etc.), whereas the public sector has many functions that are a whole lot less amenable to employing robots (policing, nursing, social services etc.). So contrary to some opinion, it's not a left wing conspiracy causing a progressive increase in the public sector, just economic growth.

I think we have become a throwaway society, but some of is not down to us as the general public.

I think we assume now that when we buy a TV that it is an item which will be binned when it develops a fault. Technology moves on that fast that the item becomes outdated anyway. I have never had a TV repaired and I once had a fridge/freezer that lasted 2 weeks and could not be repaired. Yes I think we live in a throw away society now.

Seems mad indeed. On another tack, over 60% of hoovers are thrown away in perfect working order- because the efficiency has dropped due to not emptying/cleaning the filter!!!

Seems rather odd Petra not sure what else you can do though

I guess it's got nothing to do with environmental concerns. Just, strangely, cheaper to scrap the tv than try to repair it. It's probably down to these "circuit boards".

DS was given a very good flat screen with a small problem because the original owner was told the same and he got a new one, under the guarantee.

So they both benefitted. x