22 ms·

An Effort To Bury A Throwaway Culture One Repair At A Time

130 points by olegious 14y ago

vinayan3 14y ago
A lot of people I know simply throw away things. It hurts sometimes. However, sometimes it is tough given that technology simply becomes old so fast. I do think that there are certain electronics that can last along time. In particular, it annoys me when people buy LCD TVs and one year down the road throw it away because it stopped working. The manufactures give limited warranty and suggest to buy another one. I purposely bought a TV with a much longer warranty, three years. It did cost 3x as much as a cheaper one from costco. It does look wonderful and function nearly 4 years after I bought it.
- wladimir 14y ago
  Right, it's a matter of perception and quickly changing "fashion". Many people regard devices of a year old already as very old. So they choose in favor of replacing it, even if it is a minimal problem that is easy (and cheap) to fix. I do suspect that financial pressure (due to increasing resource prices) will cause this to change around in the near future, and make people hold on to their devices for longer. In some circles, like described in the article, I'm already seeing this happen. Also, many skilled people are out of a job and have time enough to do basic repairs for each other. Hopefully this will reduce the e-waste problem...
alexkearns 14y ago
I think buying new things is great, not only in that you get something new and shiny to play with, but it also has great social benefits, stimulating economic growth, rewarding entrepreneurism and people who create things, and creating jobs. So I applaud the throwaway culture that loads of people seem to complain about. We need more of it!
- JoachimSchipper 14y ago
  If repair is cheaper than replacement, buying a new one is a waste of resources. This smells like the broken window fallacy.
  - alexkearns 14y ago
    Limiting use of resources should not be humanity's main ambition. Encouraging human creativity - which buying new things does - is more important, in my view, than minimising use of resources. It is only this generation's environmentalist mindset that make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else. Having said that, I am not saying that people should not repair stuff - people can do what they want. I was just pointing to the benefits of buying new things, which has somehow become a contentious issue nowadays. Hence, the downvotes...
    - JoachimSchipper 14y ago
      I'm not convinced new things is the best way to encourage creativity: consider buying a new (factory-produced, line) car vs. a cheap repair plus commissioning a nice painting. (I think scarce vs. abundant resources is too big a topic for a HN comment thread; suffice to say that I disagree, especially with the notion that we "make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else.")
      - alexkearns 14y ago
        I agree. Buying a new painting would certainly encourage and reward creativity, which is kind of the point I am making.
    - Someone 14y ago
      "Encouraging human creativity - which buying new things does" Citation needed/please explain.
      - alexkearns 14y ago
        See great grand parent
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window. If person A throws away his widget which could have been repaired for $2 and buys a new, identical widget for $10 his balance sheet shows $10 of assets (scenario A). If person B repairs his widget, he now has a widget worth $10 plus the $8 cash he saved - his balance sheet shows $18 of assets. Thus, person A destroyed $8 of assets by behaving irrationally/inefficiently. One may say person A's frenzied purchasing of widgets drives R&D dollars into the development of better widgets. A good counter-argument is that it was more important to develop things other than widgets and that by focusing so much on accelerating widget development scenario A forsook technological progress in more productive areas. We saw this happen with the construction industry across the developed world siphoning dollars and talent away from other areas that would have produced more long-term benefit.
  - alexkearns 14y ago
    I take what you say but I don't think that the term "throwaway culture" is to do with throwing away broken things. It is more to do with throwing away old or unfashionable things. And actually this desire for better, shinier versions of existing things drives creativity, forcing companies to innovate and endlessly create newer and shinier things. I think this process of renewal and innovation is generally a good thing, rewarding creative people. The downside, you could argue, is in this scenario all the cash goes into shiny new products, rather than some boring but vital product or services. There, I suppose, is where the government comes in.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - 5deadaccounts 14y ago
    "If person B repairs his widget, he now has a widget worth $10 plus the $8 cash he saved - his balance sheet shows $18 of assets." Definitely, if the widget can be repaired for $2 then it should be. However, assuming that there is no material cost to repairing the item, $2 doesnt pay for much labour. Seems like an unlikely scenario.
- brc 14y ago
  Broadly I see what you're saying and agree with you. When it is more efficient to produce a new thing on an assembly line than fix it, we actually all benefit. But knowing where that crossover is is tough. You can't use the same rule for everything. The worst case of throwaway was the 'cash for clunkers' scheme. That saw wholesale destruction of large amounts of serviceable vehicles, with replacements being created on production lines. It was wealth destruction all around and benefited nobody but a couple of car salesmen who got better comission checks that month.
  - AkThhhpppt 14y ago
    And air quality, and road safety. That kind of scheme is an incentive to lower the externalities of motoring - older cars burn more fuel, produce more pollution, and have less safety features.
    - bandy 14y ago
      And drove the price of used cars through the roof. A car that might have run you $100 twenty years ago ("drive it until it's dead") will now run you a cool kilobuck - granted, the high value of scrap (a Geo Metro is worth about $300 locally at a scrap yard) - if you can find a bargain. Here's a 19 year old car that the owner is asking $2300 for: http://kansascity.craigslist.org/cto/3003688305.html http://kansascity.craigslist.org/cto/3003688305.html
      - AkThhhpppt 14y ago
        I'm not in the US. Over here, the idea of a car worth driving costing only 100 euros is ludicrous, and was so even before the local scrappage schemes took plenty of 10-years-or-older cars off the road. (100 euro cars used to be found; people who don't want to admit their car's worth nothing. They were often bought by teenagers, driven psychotically for a night, and burnt out. These days I assume they're being driven into the ground instead.)
        bandy 14y ago
dhx 14y ago
When Mr. van den Akker put the iron back together, two parts were left over — no matter, he said, they were probably not that important. He plugged the frayed cord into a socket. A green light went on. Rusty water poured out. Finally, it began to steam. The risk is significant and far outweighs any benefit gained. A classic example of poor risk assessment.
- exDM69 14y ago
  When you sell products for a customer, you have to be really careful to make them not-dangerous if used by an idiot. If you fix/build stuff yourself, you get to know the ins and outs of the thing you're working with. So it doesn't matter that much if something may be a little dangerous if misused, you should know what to do with it. One or two screws missing, it's a whole lot better than buying a new one and wasting raw materials and energy and creating waste.
  - sgift 14y ago
    Just note that everyone has a bad day. This may the day you "forget" all the things you normally know and then accidents happen. I don't want to say that you should never use such things, but it is a good practice - even if you just build them for yourself - to improve them in the long-run to decrease the chance of accidents.
  - dhx 14y ago
    Two scenarios: 1. Performing dodgy repair jobs on your own equipment for your own personal use. 2. Performing dodgy repair jobs for unsuspecting people that don't know the difference between a resistor and capacitor and are trusting your skill and judgement. In instance [1] you're performing your own risk assessment and will bear any consequences. In [2] you're performing a risk assessment that will directly impact upon someone else's safety. Their level of risk acceptance may be far more conservative than your own.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      ...and if your bad repair sets a house on fire you risk the lives of the people who come to rescue you, and the lives of anyone else in the building, etc.
bobsy 14y ago
> When Mr. van den Akker put the iron back together, two parts were left over — no matter, he said, they were probably not that important. A week later the owner of the iron was electrocuted. Just kidding. The culture of discard and buy another really comes about from items being pretty cheap and the repair costs being pretty high. I personally have this biased opinion that a repaired item is likely to break again. This is almost certainly wrong but it was an idea I was brought up with and is difficult to shake. I really like what these people doing. I would certainly get more items repaired if it could be done cheaply. A repair shop as a place to gather is cool. I do think though there is a limit to what is worth repairing. Things like hoovers, irons etc are worth repairing. Technology really doesn't move that fast and paying £20 to have a hoover patched up is far better than buying a new one. Computers though. If they fail within the warranty you are already covered. If they fail after that then it really depends what the computer cost. If brought a computer for £3-400 you may find the repair cost is 50% of what you paid for it. In this case there is a strong argument that this £200 could go towards a higher spec computer. I have a laptop which overheats, it isn't worth much but it is - or should be - pretty handy. The cost to investigate the fault would cost me £75. This is before a repair is made. I was told if the problem is what he thought it might be then the cost to repair would be a £100 on top of that. In the end I just brought a new netbook for £300. I have a little problem with my iMac. The harddrive is faulty. It has some bad sectors or something which causes programs to crash. Do you know tricky it is to replace the harddrive of an iMac? Its ridiculous. To be honest pretty much all Apple devices are terribly inconvenient to repair. Its a shame that one of the worlds biggest companies isn't doing more to prevent consumer waste.
- davidw 14y ago
  > items being pretty cheap and the repair costs being pretty high I wonder if it's possible to get some of those items to places where the labor costs are low enough, and product prices high enough to make it worthwhile to fix stuff.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  > The culture of discard and buy another really comes about from items being pretty cheap and the repair costs being pretty high. Not necessarily. A big part of it is simply our broken economic system. Many, many, many items are made to break.[1] I hope we start to rent more things as a service instead of paying for them. If we paid a flat fee every month to have our houses lighted, I bet our light bulbs would be durable as heck. Obviously this is not going to be feasible for a while. But why can't we pay a flat fee to have a usable Mac? Apple stores can be found all around the world. The incentive for Apple would be to use durable hardware and write highly optimized, a little more portable software. I think gov'ts should force companies to think more about the long term by enforcing a longer minimum warranty for hardware, and force vendors to release security updates for at least 10 years. (All 32-bit Macs will have _zero_ professional use cases once Apple stops patching 10.6. Meanwhile, my mom has owned her XP Word machine for almost a decade.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
noonespecial 14y ago
Get these guys a Rep-Rap and a connection to thingverse...
wtracy 14y ago
The root cause of the "throwaway culture" seems to be the assembly line: Stuff becomes cheap when it can be produced in a series of simple, non-varying steps. Stuff just doesn't break in a consist way. If every repair were identical, we could fix stuff on an assembly line, and we would no longer constantly run into ridiculous situations where it costs less to buy a whole new widgit than to repair your old one.
- hencq 14y ago
  Yes and on top of that a lot of products are "designed for assembly" which often means using parts that 'click' together, instead of using screws. This means they're fast to assemble, but almost impossible to take apart again, making repairs overly difficult and costly.
  - maxerickson 14y ago
    Indeed. There was even a "Design for Manufacturability" elective in my ME undergrad. I don't recall seeing a countervailing "Design for Serviceability". I think another factor is the inordinate price sensitivity of the aggregate consumer.
- aaronkaplan 14y ago
  It's also important that assembly lines can be offshored, whereas a lot of repairs really need to be done locally by someone who can interact with the consumer to understand the problem. Countries where labor is cheap relative to imports don't have the same throwaway culture, because in those circumstances it's economically viable to repair things rather than replacing them.
- TylerE 14y ago
  I don't think it's the assembly line at all. I think the cause is the move to doing stuff on PCBs, doing logic in proprietary controllers rather than electro-mechanically with relays, limit switches, etc, and consumer demand for lower prices, which generally leads to lots of molded plastic and other similar cost-cutting methods, rather than use stamped metal or other more expensive processes.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
moylan 14y ago
i always regret that i didn't take my parents valve radio when the house was cleared and sold over a decade ago. it was bulky, inefficient but worked perfectly. had a lot of fond memories of that radio as a kid. they got it as a wedding present in the early sixties. the valves would eventually need replacing but there are still places selling the parts if you know where to go. but my favourite bike as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s was a bsa bike that had been built in the early forties. that thing was a tank. it's probably still out there in use every day. completely indestrucible with a little light maintenance. now however things are not built to last. ignoring electronics or computers which date fast. casettes, vcrs. analog mobiles 8bit, 16bit and now even 32bit computers are edging towards obsolescence for desktop use. a crappy tin opener still needed for those tins still sold without a prestressed ring pull will die in less than a decade. the bullhead tin opener in my parents kitchen seems to have been one of the first types sold in the late 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BullOpener.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BullOpener.png i like to think that growing up with ancient hardware gave me an appreciation for well designed and easy to maintain items. i try to avoid flashy insubstantial items.
gouranga 14y ago
Good for them. I'm a firm believer that everything can be repaired cost effectively. You just have to know what you are doing, know when to give up, know how to spot a lemon and start from the right end of the problem. That is the art. The main trick is to start with the broken item, not an item that you paid full price for and broke... i.e. I don't mean buying a $1000 item new and when it breaks spend $200 on fixing it. I mean buying a $100 broken item to start with and spending $200 fixing it, resulting in not spending that extra $700 on the new item in the first place. Despite the cost of repair in cash and time, the gain usually runs in favour of your own time, satisfaction and knowledge. It also makes you less of a slave to the credit facilities which when you consider interest, results in a lot of time spend earning to pay back. I will repair anything and everything rather than buy new. My latest win: Sony Bravia 26EX smart OLED TV. Paid 25GBP as it was completely dead and just out of warranty. 30 mins diagnostics with a Fluke multimeter (which cost me 10GBP that I repaired) pointed to duff PSU. 30 mins on the Tektronix scope (which cost me 30GBP that I repaired) pointed to a problem with a VRM. Replaced VRM in PSU from Farnell order (12GBP incl delivery) - was a bit fiddly as it was an SMD component. Works fine now and the kids have a nice TV. Also don't buy any old consumer junk. If you can't remove the battery it's not likely to want to be repaired (yes you Apple).
- digitalsushi 14y ago
  So you're some sort of electrical engineer, then. You need to factor in all the time, energy, and resources it took you to get to this point of self-sufficiency. For me to fix a dead TV safely, I'd need a few semesters of college or a solid month of shadowing an expert, if I was just interested in TV repair alone. Or just pay you the 700 dollars to do it.
  - gouranga 14y ago
    Well yes I admit that but I did the same before I even started the degree and I knew virtually nothing back then... And I wouldn't charge you $700 to fix it. I tend to do favours like that for cider, swap a few books or mowing the lawn for me. Not every "transaction" needs a wadge of cash changing hands.
DanBC 14y ago
cstross mentioned the extraordinary cost of stuff in a recent post. A pair of jeans was fantastically expensive. People had no option but to repair things. > Studies of retail pricing indicate that, after correcting for inflation, a good pair of workmans' trousers -- jeans, in other words -- would have cost the equivalent of roughly $400 in 2001 dollars in 1901. A reasonable quality man's suit would have cost the equivalent of $2-3000. I get annoyed by jumpers[2] that get holes after a year or two, and try to darn or patch them. I'd be really angry if that jumper cost me £400. See also semi-disposable scandinavian furniture. It sort of looks okay, and it works alright so long as you don't move it. But a bit of solid wood is nicer (and probably better for the environment) than chipboard and veneer, and will last a lot longer, but is a lot more expensive. I'm not sure society will be comfortable with children that cannot afford to move out (or who will be without almost any possessions) when that same society cannot cope with light bulbs that need a few seconds to warm up. [1] (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934728 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934728) [2] sweater? A woollen garment with sleeves and not buttons up the front.
- brc 14y ago
  I get very annoyed by clothes and shoes that do not last. I'm lucky to get a couple of years out of shirts and shorts. The only thing that seems to last is levis jeans - I've been faithfully buying them for decades and the style goes before the fabric does. As for disposable furniture - it's frustrating as it deterioates quickly if moved around. I learnt to make my own furniture. Very rewarding but painstakingly slow. But then, if you plan to keep something for 50 years, what's a couple of months to build it? Everything I have built myself (with help from my Dad, who hands down the knowledge and tools) is still in perfect condition. That's because it's made properly in the first place, from quality materials. I've also taken up my own car maintenance. Cars are big complex devices, and debugging one can be fun if you know where to start. Modern mechanics can't possibly keep up with all the various models and if they can't diagnose something in 30 minutes they won't, and just start replacing parts at random. Armed with a home data port program, an analytical eye and plenty of internet research, it's possible to track down problems yourself for a fraction of the cost.
  - 14y ago
Teapot 14y ago
I'm pissed when things brake. But: Repairing things is an opportunity to save your own money. And to save your own planet. And possibly explore and learn something new, or at least harvest some spare parts. And just enjoy the fun of disassembling stuff.
ctdonath 14y ago
I just bought a used sewing machine. It cost less than a new one. It's 98 years old, and with a minimum of care will last another 98. It was built to last. This notion of "bury the throwaway culture one repair at a time" treats symptoms, not roots: there is nothing persuading manufacturers to make stuff which will last. Should the movement take hold, manufacturers may very well respond by making stuff even cheaper, as the effort to make things so inexpensive it utterly undermines the movement is easier than making things robust and durable. I appreciate the movement's intentions, but think they should seek means of persuading production of durable goods, not eeking another 20% of life out of something having a very short lifespan to start with. Occurs to me that the only durable products made today are firearms. Ironic.
- arethuza 14y ago
  I remember my mother used to have a pedal operated Singer sewing machine that seemed to be largely constructed from inch thick cast iron. Unless it has been scrapped for it's (not inconsiderable) scrap value I suspect that thing will probably survive the next ice age. [We also had a typewriter from the same "Forth Rail Bridge" school of over-engineering and conspicuous iron consumption - possibly an Underwood?]
- winestock 14y ago
  That reminds me of the Linksys WRT54G. Some people predicted that it would disrupt ISPs because it was so hackable. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040527_000456.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040527_0004... The manufacturer responded by replacing the Linux firmware with a proprietary real-time operating system. That allowed them to use hardware that was less powerful than the original both in terms of electricity consumption and computational performance. Furthermore, most people have better things to do than reprogramming their wi-fi routers. Reading Cringley's predictions in that article is cringeworthy.
  - jwn 14y ago
    Linksys also then released the WRT54GL, which used the same hardware/software as the original WRT54G, and could still run OpenWRT/DD-WRT.
jpeg_hero 14y ago
It's entirely possible that the extra material required to make items that can be repaired, wastes more material than making objects that are "disposable" Modern manufactured goods have -huge- volumes (there are a lot of people on this planet) and low failure rates. If serviceability takes more material, it will probably be more waste, than otherwise.
_delirium 14y ago
The participatory/social aspect of this is pretty interesting beyond repairs. It seems like a plausible low-barrier route to learning something more about how things work, by getting some help from someone who knows how to disassemble and explain the innards of a particular item. But, seems like it'd work better for older stuff, unfortunately. A lot of newer stuff is just not made to be dis/reassembled or to have parts replaced, so it's much more difficult to do. I tried to repair a toaster recently, and as far as I can tell you can't even open it without some serious hard-to-reverse effort, because unlike older toasters, the housing isn't closed with removable screws, but is stamped/crimped together somehow.
- cschneid 14y ago
  I bought a clothes steamer a while back (Jiffy Steamer), and I was pleasantly surprised that it had a full circuit diagram and component list included in the instruction book. I can take that sucker apart, fix things, and put it back together. (well, maybe not me, but somebody could). I am willing to buy more products like that. Where do I find them?
sedachv 14y ago
There's a few comments here about old appliances and the cliche that "back then," things were built to last. Barring contrary statistical evidence, sentiments like those can largely be attributed to survivorship bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
specialist 14y ago
Another facet to consumption culture is the cost of ownership. After a tipping point, your stuff owns you. Having stuff and clutter makes me feel anxious. I've been unloading everything that's not essential. eg, I only used my microwave to heat water for tea. And it was pain in the ass to clean within and around. So it went to the curb, snatched up within minutes.
specialist 14y ago
I'd love someone to make a tank of a laser printer. Like just clone an HP LaserJet 6 (the pinnacle). Make the internals open source, the paper trays modular, and boom. Most printers are sold on price. But I think a small niche player selling durable printers with low consumable costs could do well.

130 points by olegious 14y ago

A lot of people I know simply throw away things. It hurts sometimes. However, sometimes it is tough given that technology simply becomes old so fast. I do think that there are certain electronics that can last along time. In particular, it annoys me when people buy LCD TVs and one year down the road throw it away because it stopped working. The manufactures give limited warranty and suggest to buy another one. I purposely bought a TV with a much longer warranty, three years. It did cost 3x as much as a cheaper one from costco. It does look wonderful and function nearly 4 years after I bought it.

wladimir 14y ago
Right, it's a matter of perception and quickly changing "fashion". Many people regard devices of a year old already as very old. So they choose in favor of replacing it, even if it is a minimal problem that is easy (and cheap) to fix. I do suspect that financial pressure (due to increasing resource prices) will cause this to change around in the near future, and make people hold on to their devices for longer. In some circles, like described in the article, I'm already seeing this happen. Also, many skilled people are out of a job and have time enough to do basic repairs for each other. Hopefully this will reduce the e-waste problem...

alexkearns 14y ago

I think buying new things is great, not only in that you get something new and shiny to play with, but it also has great social benefits, stimulating economic growth, rewarding entrepreneurism and people who create things, and creating jobs. So I applaud the throwaway culture that loads of people seem to complain about. We need more of it!

JoachimSchipper 14y ago
If repair is cheaper than replacement, buying a new one is a waste of resources. This smells like the broken window fallacy.
- alexkearns 14y ago
  Limiting use of resources should not be humanity's main ambition. Encouraging human creativity - which buying new things does - is more important, in my view, than minimising use of resources. It is only this generation's environmentalist mindset that make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else. Having said that, I am not saying that people should not repair stuff - people can do what they want. I was just pointing to the benefits of buying new things, which has somehow become a contentious issue nowadays. Hence, the downvotes...
  - JoachimSchipper 14y ago
    I'm not convinced new things is the best way to encourage creativity: consider buying a new (factory-produced, line) car vs. a cheap repair plus commissioning a nice painting. (I think scarce vs. abundant resources is too big a topic for a HN comment thread; suffice to say that I disagree, especially with the notion that we "make such a big issue of resource use, at the cost of almost anything else.")
    - alexkearns 14y ago
      I agree. Buying a new painting would certainly encourage and reward creativity, which is kind of the point I am making.
  - Someone 14y ago
    "Encouraging human creativity - which buying new things does" Citation needed/please explain.
    - alexkearns 14y ago
      See great grand parent
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window. If person A throws away his widget which could have been repaired for $2 and buys a new, identical widget for $10 his balance sheet shows $10 of assets (scenario A). If person B repairs his widget, he now has a widget worth $10 plus the $8 cash he saved - his balance sheet shows $18 of assets. Thus, person A destroyed $8 of assets by behaving irrationally/inefficiently. One may say person A's frenzied purchasing of widgets drives R&D dollars into the development of better widgets. A good counter-argument is that it was more important to develop things other than widgets and that by focusing so much on accelerating widget development scenario A forsook technological progress in more productive areas. We saw this happen with the construction industry across the developed world siphoning dollars and talent away from other areas that would have produced more long-term benefit.
- alexkearns 14y ago
  I take what you say but I don't think that the term "throwaway culture" is to do with throwing away broken things. It is more to do with throwing away old or unfashionable things. And actually this desire for better, shinier versions of existing things drives creativity, forcing companies to innovate and endlessly create newer and shinier things. I think this process of renewal and innovation is generally a good thing, rewarding creative people. The downside, you could argue, is in this scenario all the cash goes into shiny new products, rather than some boring but vital product or services. There, I suppose, is where the government comes in.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- 5deadaccounts 14y ago
  "If person B repairs his widget, he now has a widget worth $10 plus the $8 cash he saved - his balance sheet shows $18 of assets." Definitely, if the widget can be repaired for $2 then it should be. However, assuming that there is no material cost to repairing the item, $2 doesnt pay for much labour. Seems like an unlikely scenario.
brc 14y ago
Broadly I see what you're saying and agree with you. When it is more efficient to produce a new thing on an assembly line than fix it, we actually all benefit. But knowing where that crossover is is tough. You can't use the same rule for everything. The worst case of throwaway was the 'cash for clunkers' scheme. That saw wholesale destruction of large amounts of serviceable vehicles, with replacements being created on production lines. It was wealth destruction all around and benefited nobody but a couple of car salesmen who got better comission checks that month.
- AkThhhpppt 14y ago
  And air quality, and road safety. That kind of scheme is an incentive to lower the externalities of motoring - older cars burn more fuel, produce more pollution, and have less safety features.
  - bandy 14y ago
    And drove the price of used cars through the roof. A car that might have run you $100 twenty years ago ("drive it until it's dead") will now run you a cool kilobuck - granted, the high value of scrap (a Geo Metro is worth about $300 locally at a scrap yard) - if you can find a bargain. Here's a 19 year old car that the owner is asking $2300 for: http://kansascity.craigslist.org/cto/3003688305.html http://kansascity.craigslist.org/cto/3003688305.html
    - AkThhhpppt 14y ago
      I'm not in the US. Over here, the idea of a car worth driving costing only 100 euros is ludicrous, and was so even before the local scrappage schemes took plenty of 10-years-or-older cars off the road. (100 euro cars used to be found; people who don't want to admit their car's worth nothing. They were often bought by teenagers, driven psychotically for a night, and burnt out. These days I assume they're being driven into the ground instead.)
      - bandy 14y ago

dhx 14y ago

When Mr. van den Akker put the iron back together, two parts were left over — no matter, he said, they were probably not that important. He plugged the frayed cord into a socket. A green light went on. Rusty water poured out. Finally, it began to steam. The risk is significant and far outweighs any benefit gained. A classic example of poor risk assessment.

exDM69 14y ago
When you sell products for a customer, you have to be really careful to make them not-dangerous if used by an idiot. If you fix/build stuff yourself, you get to know the ins and outs of the thing you're working with. So it doesn't matter that much if something may be a little dangerous if misused, you should know what to do with it. One or two screws missing, it's a whole lot better than buying a new one and wasting raw materials and energy and creating waste.
- sgift 14y ago
  Just note that everyone has a bad day. This may the day you "forget" all the things you normally know and then accidents happen. I don't want to say that you should never use such things, but it is a good practice - even if you just build them for yourself - to improve them in the long-run to decrease the chance of accidents.
- dhx 14y ago
  Two scenarios: 1. Performing dodgy repair jobs on your own equipment for your own personal use. 2. Performing dodgy repair jobs for unsuspecting people that don't know the difference between a resistor and capacitor and are trusting your skill and judgement. In instance [1] you're performing your own risk assessment and will bear any consequences. In [2] you're performing a risk assessment that will directly impact upon someone else's safety. Their level of risk acceptance may be far more conservative than your own.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    ...and if your bad repair sets a house on fire you risk the lives of the people who come to rescue you, and the lives of anyone else in the building, etc.

bobsy 14y ago

> When Mr. van den Akker put the iron back together, two parts were left over — no matter, he said, they were probably not that important. A week later the owner of the iron was electrocuted. Just kidding. The culture of discard and buy another really comes about from items being pretty cheap and the repair costs being pretty high. I personally have this biased opinion that a repaired item is likely to break again. This is almost certainly wrong but it was an idea I was brought up with and is difficult to shake. I really like what these people doing. I would certainly get more items repaired if it could be done cheaply. A repair shop as a place to gather is cool. I do think though there is a limit to what is worth repairing. Things like hoovers, irons etc are worth repairing. Technology really doesn't move that fast and paying £20 to have a hoover patched up is far better than buying a new one. Computers though. If they fail within the warranty you are already covered. If they fail after that then it really depends what the computer cost. If brought a computer for £3-400 you may find the repair cost is 50% of what you paid for it. In this case there is a strong argument that this £200 could go towards a higher spec computer. I have a laptop which overheats, it isn't worth much but it is - or should be - pretty handy. The cost to investigate the fault would cost me £75. This is before a repair is made. I was told if the problem is what he thought it might be then the cost to repair would be a £100 on top of that. In the end I just brought a new netbook for £300. I have a little problem with my iMac. The harddrive is faulty. It has some bad sectors or something which causes programs to crash. Do you know tricky it is to replace the harddrive of an iMac? Its ridiculous. To be honest pretty much all Apple devices are terribly inconvenient to repair. Its a shame that one of the worlds biggest companies isn't doing more to prevent consumer waste.

davidw 14y ago
> items being pretty cheap and the repair costs being pretty high I wonder if it's possible to get some of those items to places where the labor costs are low enough, and product prices high enough to make it worthwhile to fix stuff.
gurkendoktor 14y ago
> The culture of discard and buy another really comes about from items being pretty cheap and the repair costs being pretty high. Not necessarily. A big part of it is simply our broken economic system. Many, many, many items are made to break.[1] I hope we start to rent more things as a service instead of paying for them. If we paid a flat fee every month to have our houses lighted, I bet our light bulbs would be durable as heck. Obviously this is not going to be feasible for a while. But why can't we pay a flat fee to have a usable Mac? Apple stores can be found all around the world. The incentive for Apple would be to use durable hardware and write highly optimized, a little more portable software. I think gov'ts should force companies to think more about the long term by enforcing a longer minimum warranty for hardware, and force vendors to release security updates for at least 10 years. (All 32-bit Macs will have _zero_ professional use cases once Apple stops patching 10.6. Meanwhile, my mom has owned her XP Word machine for almost a decade.) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

noonespecial 14y ago

Get these guys a Rep-Rap and a connection to thingverse...

wtracy 14y ago

The root cause of the "throwaway culture" seems to be the assembly line: Stuff becomes cheap when it can be produced in a series of simple, non-varying steps. Stuff just doesn't break in a consist way. If every repair were identical, we could fix stuff on an assembly line, and we would no longer constantly run into ridiculous situations where it costs less to buy a whole new widgit than to repair your old one.

hencq 14y ago
Yes and on top of that a lot of products are "designed for assembly" which often means using parts that 'click' together, instead of using screws. This means they're fast to assemble, but almost impossible to take apart again, making repairs overly difficult and costly.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  Indeed. There was even a "Design for Manufacturability" elective in my ME undergrad. I don't recall seeing a countervailing "Design for Serviceability". I think another factor is the inordinate price sensitivity of the aggregate consumer.
aaronkaplan 14y ago
It's also important that assembly lines can be offshored, whereas a lot of repairs really need to be done locally by someone who can interact with the consumer to understand the problem. Countries where labor is cheap relative to imports don't have the same throwaway culture, because in those circumstances it's economically viable to repair things rather than replacing them.
TylerE 14y ago
I don't think it's the assembly line at all. I think the cause is the move to doing stuff on PCBs, doing logic in proprietary controllers rather than electro-mechanically with relays, limit switches, etc, and consumer demand for lower prices, which generally leads to lots of molded plastic and other similar cost-cutting methods, rather than use stamped metal or other more expensive processes.

deleted 14y ago

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moylan 14y ago

i always regret that i didn't take my parents valve radio when the house was cleared and sold over a decade ago. it was bulky, inefficient but worked perfectly. had a lot of fond memories of that radio as a kid. they got it as a wedding present in the early sixties. the valves would eventually need replacing but there are still places selling the parts if you know where to go. but my favourite bike as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s was a bsa bike that had been built in the early forties. that thing was a tank. it's probably still out there in use every day. completely indestrucible with a little light maintenance. now however things are not built to last. ignoring electronics or computers which date fast. casettes, vcrs. analog mobiles 8bit, 16bit and now even 32bit computers are edging towards obsolescence for desktop use. a crappy tin opener still needed for those tins still sold without a prestressed ring pull will die in less than a decade. the bullhead tin opener in my parents kitchen seems to have been one of the first types sold in the late 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BullOpener.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BullOpener.png i like to think that growing up with ancient hardware gave me an appreciation for well designed and easy to maintain items. i try to avoid flashy insubstantial items.

gouranga 14y ago

Good for them. I'm a firm believer that everything can be repaired cost effectively. You just have to know what you are doing, know when to give up, know how to spot a lemon and start from the right end of the problem. That is the art. The main trick is to start with the broken item, not an item that you paid full price for and broke... i.e. I don't mean buying a $1000 item new and when it breaks spend $200 on fixing it. I mean buying a $100 broken item to start with and spending $200 fixing it, resulting in not spending that extra $700 on the new item in the first place. Despite the cost of repair in cash and time, the gain usually runs in favour of your own time, satisfaction and knowledge. It also makes you less of a slave to the credit facilities which when you consider interest, results in a lot of time spend earning to pay back. I will repair anything and everything rather than buy new. My latest win: Sony Bravia 26EX smart OLED TV. Paid 25GBP as it was completely dead and just out of warranty. 30 mins diagnostics with a Fluke multimeter (which cost me 10GBP that I repaired) pointed to duff PSU. 30 mins on the Tektronix scope (which cost me 30GBP that I repaired) pointed to a problem with a VRM. Replaced VRM in PSU from Farnell order (12GBP incl delivery) - was a bit fiddly as it was an SMD component. Works fine now and the kids have a nice TV. Also don't buy any old consumer junk. If you can't remove the battery it's not likely to want to be repaired (yes you Apple).

digitalsushi 14y ago
So you're some sort of electrical engineer, then. You need to factor in all the time, energy, and resources it took you to get to this point of self-sufficiency. For me to fix a dead TV safely, I'd need a few semesters of college or a solid month of shadowing an expert, if I was just interested in TV repair alone. Or just pay you the 700 dollars to do it.
- gouranga 14y ago
  Well yes I admit that but I did the same before I even started the degree and I knew virtually nothing back then... And I wouldn't charge you $700 to fix it. I tend to do favours like that for cider, swap a few books or mowing the lawn for me. Not every "transaction" needs a wadge of cash changing hands.

DanBC 14y ago

cstross mentioned the extraordinary cost of stuff in a recent post. A pair of jeans was fantastically expensive. People had no option but to repair things. > Studies of retail pricing indicate that, after correcting for inflation, a good pair of workmans' trousers -- jeans, in other words -- would have cost the equivalent of roughly $400 in 2001 dollars in 1901. A reasonable quality man's suit would have cost the equivalent of $2-3000. I get annoyed by jumpers[2] that get holes after a year or two, and try to darn or patch them. I'd be really angry if that jumper cost me £400. See also semi-disposable scandinavian furniture. It sort of looks okay, and it works alright so long as you don't move it. But a bit of solid wood is nicer (and probably better for the environment) than chipboard and veneer, and will last a lot longer, but is a lot more expensive. I'm not sure society will be comfortable with children that cannot afford to move out (or who will be without almost any possessions) when that same society cannot cope with light bulbs that need a few seconds to warm up. [1] (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934728 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3934728) [2] sweater? A woollen garment with sleeves and not buttons up the front.

brc 14y ago
I get very annoyed by clothes and shoes that do not last. I'm lucky to get a couple of years out of shirts and shorts. The only thing that seems to last is levis jeans - I've been faithfully buying them for decades and the style goes before the fabric does. As for disposable furniture - it's frustrating as it deterioates quickly if moved around. I learnt to make my own furniture. Very rewarding but painstakingly slow. But then, if you plan to keep something for 50 years, what's a couple of months to build it? Everything I have built myself (with help from my Dad, who hands down the knowledge and tools) is still in perfect condition. That's because it's made properly in the first place, from quality materials. I've also taken up my own car maintenance. Cars are big complex devices, and debugging one can be fun if you know where to start. Modern mechanics can't possibly keep up with all the various models and if they can't diagnose something in 30 minutes they won't, and just start replacing parts at random. Armed with a home data port program, an analytical eye and plenty of internet research, it's possible to track down problems yourself for a fraction of the cost.
- 14y ago

Teapot 14y ago

I'm pissed when things brake. But: Repairing things is an opportunity to save your own money. And to save your own planet. And possibly explore and learn something new, or at least harvest some spare parts. And just enjoy the fun of disassembling stuff.

ctdonath 14y ago

I just bought a used sewing machine. It cost less than a new one. It's 98 years old, and with a minimum of care will last another 98. It was built to last. This notion of "bury the throwaway culture one repair at a time" treats symptoms, not roots: there is nothing persuading manufacturers to make stuff which will last. Should the movement take hold, manufacturers may very well respond by making stuff even cheaper, as the effort to make things so inexpensive it utterly undermines the movement is easier than making things robust and durable. I appreciate the movement's intentions, but think they should seek means of persuading production of durable goods, not eeking another 20% of life out of something having a very short lifespan to start with. Occurs to me that the only durable products made today are firearms. Ironic.

arethuza 14y ago
I remember my mother used to have a pedal operated Singer sewing machine that seemed to be largely constructed from inch thick cast iron. Unless it has been scrapped for it's (not inconsiderable) scrap value I suspect that thing will probably survive the next ice age. [We also had a typewriter from the same "Forth Rail Bridge" school of over-engineering and conspicuous iron consumption - possibly an Underwood?]
winestock 14y ago
That reminds me of the Linksys WRT54G. Some people predicted that it would disrupt ISPs because it was so hackable. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040527_000456.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2004/pulpit_20040527_0004... The manufacturer responded by replacing the Linux firmware with a proprietary real-time operating system. That allowed them to use hardware that was less powerful than the original both in terms of electricity consumption and computational performance. Furthermore, most people have better things to do than reprogramming their wi-fi routers. Reading Cringley's predictions in that article is cringeworthy.
- jwn 14y ago
  Linksys also then released the WRT54GL, which used the same hardware/software as the original WRT54G, and could still run OpenWRT/DD-WRT.

jpeg_hero 14y ago

It's entirely possible that the extra material required to make items that can be repaired, wastes more material than making objects that are "disposable" Modern manufactured goods have -huge- volumes (there are a lot of people on this planet) and low failure rates. If serviceability takes more material, it will probably be more waste, than otherwise.

_delirium 14y ago

The participatory/social aspect of this is pretty interesting beyond repairs. It seems like a plausible low-barrier route to learning something more about how things work, by getting some help from someone who knows how to disassemble and explain the innards of a particular item. But, seems like it'd work better for older stuff, unfortunately. A lot of newer stuff is just not made to be dis/reassembled or to have parts replaced, so it's much more difficult to do. I tried to repair a toaster recently, and as far as I can tell you can't even open it without some serious hard-to-reverse effort, because unlike older toasters, the housing isn't closed with removable screws, but is stamped/crimped together somehow.

cschneid 14y ago
I bought a clothes steamer a while back (Jiffy Steamer), and I was pleasantly surprised that it had a full circuit diagram and component list included in the instruction book. I can take that sucker apart, fix things, and put it back together. (well, maybe not me, but somebody could). I am willing to buy more products like that. Where do I find them?

sedachv 14y ago

There's a few comments here about old appliances and the cliche that "back then," things were built to last. Barring contrary statistical evidence, sentiments like those can largely be attributed to survivorship bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

specialist 14y ago

Another facet to consumption culture is the cost of ownership. After a tipping point, your stuff owns you. Having stuff and clutter makes me feel anxious. I've been unloading everything that's not essential. eg, I only used my microwave to heat water for tea. And it was pain in the ass to clean within and around. So it went to the curb, snatched up within minutes.

specialist 14y ago

I'd love someone to make a tank of a laser printer. Like just clone an HP LaserJet 6 (the pinnacle). Make the internals open source, the paper trays modular, and boom. Most printers are sold on price. But I think a small niche player selling durable printers with low consumable costs could do well.