Our "throw-away" world

[rwguinn]

We are all familiar with the "Throw-away" printers, whose cost (including ink) is lower than the cost of replacement ink cartridges--even though those cartridges may contain 3X the ink of the original.
Repair is no longer an option, especially on nearly all consumer electronics--you just replace the whole thing--or possibly, on some things, a circuit board.
My 3 year-old 51" Plasma television went suddenly blank during the middle of a program.. After loading it in the truck and hauling it in to Ft. Worth, then waiting a week, we find that the power supply went South.
The repair shop told me the total cost to repair is $496. Fifty of that is already paid, as a non-refundable deposit. There is also the fact that the PS is not available--on National back-order, and they can't give a delivery date.
Wal-Mart has the newest iteration of that television, with a few extra features, on sale for $498. Two dollars more than the power supply.

My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. On occasion, Bob would come to the house and disembowel the thing right there, replacing components as necessary (and get knocked halfway across the room by the HV section, likely as not). In '66, we got a color set, with similar life history. Never, IIRC, did repairs amount to more that 30% of the cost of a new machine.

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

[uk_dave]

Probably : constant innovation.

It no good making a model which will last for ten years or more because the technology underpinning it may be obsolete in two to three years.

Plasma screen tv? LCD? Backlit? 3D? Surround Sound? etc etc etc

[steve s]

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair.

They don't need to end up in landfills. Look in the yellow pages under recycling and you'll find places that specialize in electronics. I take a lot of stuff to a local e-cycling center. They'll take just about anything even if it's not electronic, as long as it fits into their giant shredder and the metal doesn't exceed a certain thickness.

But overall I agree with you. It's frustrating when things that are labeled "durable goods" aren't very durable.

Steve S

[WildCat]

Last year I went to Home Depot to buy new batteries for my DeWalt cordless drill, only to find the new model was on sale for $60 - more than $40 cheaper than the 2-pack of new batteries. Granted, the batteries in the new one weren't the extra-capacity ones, but still... I bought the new one.

[carlitos]

I have this feeling about entire neighborhoods. If houses, streets and infrastructure become disposable, I think that we might be doing it wrong.

[Skeptic Ginger]

Built in obsolescence is a marketing ploy. It's partly the speed of innovation and it's partly planned obsolescence. I don't know the % contribution of each part. Probably it depends on the device. With computers, it's more innovation, with printers, perhaps more planned obsolescence.

[theprestige]

Meh. All it means is that in another few hundred years our more advanced descendants will be mining our landfills the way we mine copper and coal.

[commandlinegamer]

With the price of copper at the moment, you'd be crazy to dump any electronics in landfill. In any case, recycling is pretty much mandatory now given the recent European regulations.

[Furcifer]

This netbook I'm typing on right now set me back about $200. It does everything I need it to do, internet, email, word processing and even some photo editing. That $200 was last year and I've seen newer models at Staples for as little as $100 out the door. For all intents and purposes this is disposable, if anything goes wrong with it it's going to cost about $100 to fix, the hard drive or the monitor, maybe more if the motherboard were to go.
The same thing goes for laptops, you can get a basic 15 inch laptop for about $300. If it dies in the 1 year warranty period you get a replacement and if it dies after that any repair is going to set you back about 1/3 the cost of a newer and better model. Essentially disposable.
I saw an Indian company is aiming at a sub $100 tablet computer due to come out next year. Just the basics, but basically all you need to run most programs and do what most people do every day on their personal computer. Now that's a truly disposable computer.
All of your personal electronics are basically disposable. It's pretty amazing how in about a 20 year period we went from only maybe the top 10% of households having personal computers to disposable ones.

[lionking]

We replaced all the old TVs with flat screens over the past couple of years (with all our kids, there's six or seven). The TVs we replaced were all working and quite new, but we couldn't even give them away to charity op shops. Into landfill they went.

[kedo1981]

The whole throwaway printer thing is border line evil.
The ink replacement doesn’t have to cost that much.
Pushing people to buy new, just generates waste.
There are entire towns in Asia that are stacked with western junk.
Old TVs will be one of the biggest piles of junk, way to go US government.

[rwguinn]

The whole throwaway printer thing is border line evil.
The ink replacement doesn’t have to cost that much.
Pushing people to buy new, just generates waste.
There are entire towns in Asia that are stacked with western junk.
Old TVs will be one of the biggest piles of junk, way to go US government.
That one stacks up to me as the non sequitur of the century...

[OnlyTellsTruths]

We replaced all the old TVs with flat screens over the past couple of years (with all our kids, there's six or seven). The TVs we replaced were all working and quite new, but we couldn't even give them away to charity op shops. Into landfill they went.


The "pawn shops" and "flea markets" around here still buy and sell old TVs (CRTs). You would have gotten anywhere from $10 to $40 each.

[ponderingturtle]

We are all familiar with the "Throw-away" printers, whose cost (including ink) is lower than the cost of replacement ink cartridges--even though those cartridges may contain 3X the ink of the original.
Repair is no longer an option, especially on nearly all consumer electronics--you just replace the whole thing--or possibly, on some things, a circuit board.
My 3 year-old 51" Plasma television went suddenly blank during the middle of a program.. After loading it in the truck and hauling it in to Ft. Worth, then waiting a week, we find that the power supply went South.
The repair shop told me the total cost to repair is $496. Fifty of that is already paid, as a non-refundable deposit. There is also the fact that the PS is not available--on National back-order, and they can't give a delivery date.
Wal-Mart has the newest iteration of that television, with a few extra features, on sale for $498. Two dollars more than the power supply.

My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones. On occasion, Bob would come to the house and disembowel the thing right there, replacing components as necessary (and get knocked halfway across the room by the HV section, likely as not). In '66, we got a color set, with similar life history. Never, IIRC, did repairs amount to more that 30% of the cost of a new machine.

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

So you would feel better if the TV cost 5,000? Then repairing it would be easy. The cost would only be 10% of the purchase price.

The problem is that people do not want to pay more for a repairable item.

[Rasmus]

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

They are not throw-away in the sense that we use them once and then dump then like razor blades, bottle caps or lunch bags.

And it is not like we simply switched from repairing $500 items to throwing away the exact same items now when they break. The items are vastly different and what we now get for $500 would be vastly more expensive if it was constructed in a way that'd make it economically sound to repair them.

I am considering getting a new TV soon. For just a few hundred bucks I can get a huge wide screen set - something that plain didn't exist a few years ago. My current TV is probably around 10 years old - why would I ever want to spend money on repairing a 25" tube with just one scart port, no usb , no hdmi, no nothing?

The thing did last all these years, too. And it's not the only TV that old I know off. Why should you waste resources and money on items that are easier to repair if they don't tend to break much at all? Once the thing breaks chances are the owner will just accept that he paid 15 or 20$ per year of usage and move on.

I wouldn't spend 30% of the replacement price on fixing it. I wouldn't spend 20% and I'd think about just ditching it at 10%, too.

Incidentally, when my mother was shopping around for an mp3 player (or possibly mobile phone) her question as to the battery life was met with a puzzled sales person in the store: How long did my mother plan on using the device that battery life would ever be an issue?

[lionking]

The "pawn shops" and "flea markets" around here still buy and sell old TVs (CRTs). You would have gotten anywhere from $10 to $40 each.

Not here unfortunately. We had a baltic pine TV cabinet which cost about $400. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army op shop. They said they couldn't sell it. I chopped it up for firewood.

[Architect]

This morning I dropped off our old 26" Panasonic CRT TV at the local cowp recycling centre1 because we'd replaced it with new digital flatscreen 32" units. It was 15 years old - wedding present - and worked a treat, but was (a) analogue and (b) quite bulky.

Anyway, at the cowp I was directed to a black shipping container full of old CRT tellys. Terrible waste. But not half as much as the pile of discarded bikes opposite. I asked the Council chap guiding traffic and he said "aye, it would scare you whit fowk throw awa' an' nowt wrang wi' them...but if we lift 'em, we get done fur theft. It's a funny old game, eh?".

Yes, we seem to have gone a long way down the ol' disposable culture. And many new buildings are designed the same way.






1. My fellow Scots will understand.

[bjornart]

The biggest "problem" is the differences in labor costs in fabrication and maintenance. The production of raw materials, components and eventual assembly of our goods has a low cost due to a either or a combination of automation and cheap third world labor.

Fixing things can rarely be automated and is not economical to off-shore.

If each man hour that goes into the vast economy that makes our consumer electronics possible cost something close to what we pay, the goods would cost a lot more and it might be economic to produce spare parts and replace the bits that die. It's possible though that the difference between automated production and manual repair would still make it uneconomic.

[ponderingturtle]

The biggest "problem" is the differences in labor costs in fabrication and maintenance. The production of raw materials, components and eventual assembly of our goods has a low cost due to a either or a combination of automation and cheap third world labor.

Fixing things can rarely be automated and is not economical to off-shore.

If each man hour that goes into the vast economy that makes our consumer electronics possible cost something close to what we pay, the goods would cost a lot more and it might be economic to produce spare parts and replace the bits that die. It's possible though that the difference between automated production and manual repair would still make it uneconomic.

This is not all of it though. You also have the issue that to make production easier it can make repair harder. And production is lower skill that repair because there is no need to determine what the issue is.

[Nosi]

I took a color 15 inch 1980's analog mono not-ready-for-cable TV to the Salvation Army and they fell on it like starving dogs. The charity shops here will grab anything.

Of course, I was recycling long before I was aware of "throw away electronic culture". I would buy 'refurb' before new. (That's shop repaired then discounted merchandise.) I 'rebuilt' computers new rather than dump old computers. Instead of buying new printers when their costly ink ran out, I bought 'refurb' ink tanks at online ink-tank stores. The stores give you plastic mailers to kindly send the old empties postage paid. I'd fill 'em myself but meds make me shake.

I'll gladly give a good home to any homeless netbook or laptop. :D

[TragicMonkey]

The problem with TVs is the modern designs. Used to be all TVs had flat tops, which made it quite simple: when your TV busted you put a tablecloth over it and put the new TV on top of it. My grandparents never had a "TV stand" because what the TV was standing on was the previous TV. You can't do that with these newfangled flat things, and even the ones before then (like mine) have angles and slopes at the top. I can barely keep the fake plant and little bronze Buddha atop mine without them sliding off. Bad design.

Future TVs won't have a screen at all, they'll just project a holographic image into thin air. Good luck putting ornaments on top of that. Lousy futurepeople! Have they no knickknacks and bric-a-brac and gewgaws? We must all agree to stop having children, that will put paid to the futurepeople by preventing their existence, see how they like that! Ha!

[kedo1981]

They will have holographic gee-gaws

[casebro]

One of my pet philosophical thoughts is that we may have reached the end of how much growth an economy can be based on.

Like the housing market that has lately collapsed, how much can we mortgage our future, with the mortgage to be paid off by the next generations, only because the next generations will have more people, with more spending? Like the Social Security budget, that depends on more workers paying in, in every successive generation? It all has to end some day.

Has that day come?

So, in a contracted economy, won't so few of us be able to afford new items? You'll need cash instead of credit. Won't we have more repairmen to fix more of our gizmos? Companies that will sell more parts, because sales of new items will be flat? More standardization of parts, possible the parts retailing will be on of the few growth industries?

Hey, aren't car manufactures required to make parts for 10 years? I believe the make more $$$ on parts than they do on a car.

[WildCat]

Not here unfortunately. We had a baltic pine TV cabinet which cost about $400. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army op shop. They said they couldn't sell it. I chopped it up for firewood.
Yeah, you can't even give away old entertainment centers made for 4:3 ratio television screens.

I made a very large built-in entertainment center big enough for a 50"+ widescreen, I hope the ratio doesn't change!

[The Central Scrutinizer]

How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

You're assuming it is a "mess".

[TragicMonkey]

They will have holographic gee-gaws

Hmm. That would be neat as far as being able to change them out often, but they'd lack the important quality of serving as makeshift weaponry. You can hardly lure people into your parlor and then casually hit them over the head with a hologram. But people rarely look at the small cast iron bust of Lincoln sitting on the bookcase and think "he could totally kill me with that, I should make sure he's really just getting a book and not getting revenge". I believe one of the most important elements in home decor is arranging things so you're never more than a foot away from a potential murder weapon.

[marplots]

My dad paid, in 1955, 50 bucks for a Black and White TV. When it died, we checked the tubes at the corner store, and replaced the bad ones.

While I agree with the spirit of the OP, I'd like to point out that the bad tubes were thrown away instead of repairing them.

When I repair something cheap (the last example for me was a $10 coffee mill) I do it for pleasure, not to save money. Things don't seem to be designed with repair in mind, that's for sure.

[JSFolk]

To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.

[rwguinn]

To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.
Since I have replaced it, and now have a spare, that is absolutely what I intend to do. I have some experience in the matter, and I can't screw it up worse than it already is :D

[casebro]

RWG, have you tried a net search for the year make model?

I'm watching a 36" CRT TV that I picked out of a dumpster. 10 hours of net time and taking it apart and putting it back together many times, located a bad solder joint. Repair cost $0.

[MichaelN]

To the OP: If you're willing to do a bit of digging, look and make sure you didn't just have a fuse blow in your power supply. Have a coworker who was told he needed a new PS in his 50" plasma... turns out that a $2 fuse fixed it.
Yes, that's a common issue. Also common is the filtering capacitors in the power supply giving way (the electrolyte dries out). For a few dollars you can buy much better capacitors from places like digikey.

[Autolite]

Anyway, at the cowp I was directed to a black shipping container full of old CRT tellys. Terrible waste. But not half as much as the pile of discarded bikes opposite. I asked the Council chap guiding traffic and he said "aye, it would scare you whit fowk throw awa' an' nowt wrang wi' them...but if we lift 'em, we get done fur theft. It's a funny old game, eh?".

Being a bit of a pack-rat myself, it disgusts me the stuff that people throw away that is perfectly repairable. It's not so much what they throw out as is the fact that one is not permitted to reclaim it to make use of it.

From computers to lawn mowers, I rebuild and reuse anything that I can get my hands on. Now that's true recycling, but scavenging such items is prohibited at almost all recycling centres.

Go figure...

[elgarak]

RWG, have you tried a net search for the year make model?

I'm watching a 36" CRT TV that I picked out of a dumpster. 10 hours of net time and taking it apart and putting it back together many times, located a bad solder joint. Repair cost $0.

But you had to invest 10 hours of time. How much would you charge for that if you would do it professionally?

[NewtonTrino]

First off the cost of labor here vs the cost of labor where it was manufactured are different. A skilled repairperson is probably going to charge $60 an hour at least. Most of these devices don't even have $60 in labor into them.

Secondly for a lot of modern electronics it's not really built to be serviceable because they optimize for cost of production, not cost of repair. The more you bundle components together into big globs the cheaper the overall unit is because it's simpler. All of those tubes from the old days have been augmented literally millions of time but shrunk at the same time. You don't repair a chip because it's too small to do anything useful with. Circuit boards are easy to build on assembly lines but a nightmare to debug and repair. Many boards if they fail test in the factory are simpler recycled or discarded because it's cheaper than trying to repair them.

Thirdly ever new model gets more refined and constantly cheaper. So if your set is a couple of years old the newer set is going to have more features, probably use less power and be cheaper.

Combine all of these and quite a few things start falling into the throw-away category pretty quickly.

[casebro]

But you had to invest 10 hours of time. How much would you charge for that if you would do it professionally?

A pro would have known where to look for the 'degaussing thermistor'. I spent most of that time trying to find a part that I didn't even know what it looked like. Plus a bit of a shotgun approach of "well, I still can't find it, I'll try something else". I finally found it when I took the board out into the sun to look. I touched it, it fell off the board and rolled across the parking lot.

So a pro, a couple hours at $60, $120 for a hugemoungous CRT TV. That's only 50¢/lb.

[WildCat]

So a pro, a couple hours at $60, $120 for a hugemoungous CRT TV. That's only 50¢/lb.
But it's standard def and 4:3 screen ratio.

IOW, obsolete.

[Andrew Wiggin]

We're already mining landfills for recycled electronics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digger_gold

[casebro]

But it's standard def and 4:3 screen ratio.

IOW, obsolete.

It's as up-to-date as my Mark I Mod 0 eyeballs.

[WildCat]

It's as up-to-date as my Mark I Mod 0 eyeballs.
Well if you're legally blind I guess it won't matter.

But most people like hi-def and the ability to watch a film without cropping things out to make it fit on a 4:3 sceen.

I sold my 32" TV for $135 4 years ago when I bought a 40" LCD for $135, had I waited nother year I don't think I could have sold it at all. Bear in mind I bought it for $800 in 2002. I certainly don't miss that 230 lb. behemoth.

[Noztradamus]

One of my pet philosophical thoughts is that we may have reached the end of how much growth an economy can be based on.
~~~~~~
Hey, aren't car manufactures required to make parts for 10 years? I believe the make more $$$ on parts than they do on a car.

That's old thinking. Cash for clunkers, baby!

[dtugg]

Well if you're legally blind I guess it won't matter.

But most people like hi-def and the ability to watch a film without cropping things out to make it fit on a 4:3 sceen.

I sold my 32" TV for $135 4 years ago when I bought a 40" LCD for $135, had I waited nother year I don't think I could have sold it at all. Bear in mind I bought it for $800 in 2002. I certainly don't miss that 230 lb. behemoth.

How did you get a 40" LCD for $135? Especially four years ago.

[marplots]

How did you get a 40" LCD for $135? Especially four years ago.

Bought this first? http://www.gunsamerica.com/913096720/Guns/Pistols/A-Misc-Pistols/Jimenez_Arms_JA_380_380ACP_6_Round_Compact_Polishe d_Chrome_Pistol.htm

[WildCat]

Well if you're legally blind I guess it won't matter.

But most people like hi-def and the ability to watch a film without cropping things out to make it fit on a 4:3 sceen.

I sold my 32" TV for $135 4 years ago when I bought a 40" LCD for $135, had I waited nother year I don't think I could have sold it at all. Bear in mind I bought it for $800 in 2002. I certainly don't miss that 230 lb. behemoth.
Oops, hilited part should not be there. :blush:

I wish I could get a 40" LCD for $135!

[WildCat]

How did you get a 40" LCD for $135? Especially four years ago.
It was actually $1,150 or so IIRC.

The new LCD TVs, with the LED backlight, are much much better! It's amazing how fast TVs are evolving now. And now there's 3D added to the mix.

[casebro]

I suppose you use your hi-def piece of consumerist trash to watch The Simpsons ?

And to make them, the Chinese are filling the air with coal smoke.

And it cost more than my truck is worth. Or is that your consumerist point?

[Nosi]

The problem with TVs is the modern designs. Used to be all TVs had flat tops, which made it quite simple: when your TV busted you put a tablecloth over it and put the new TV on top of it. My grandparents never had a "TV stand" because what the TV was standing on was the previous TV. You can't do that with these newfangled flat things, and even the ones before then (like mine) have angles and slopes at the top. I can barely keep the fake plant and little bronze Buddha atop mine without them sliding off. Bad design.

Future TVs won't have a screen at all, they'll just project a holographic image into thin air. Good luck putting ornaments on top of that. Lousy futurepeople! Have they no knickknacks and bric-a-brac and gewgaws? We must all agree to stop having children, that will put paid to the futurepeople by preventing their existence, see how they like that! Ha!

Flat screen TV's are nothing but wiggly paintings, their fat cousins are nothing but picture tubes that you can toss into your wooden cabinet entertainment centre alongside your stereo in your mancave.

In the olden days, the 'picture tube' came with a prebuilt cabinet. Today, if your 'picture tube' goes on the fritz, you toss it, buy a new one, keep the cabinet. Yesterday, you did the same, but you had to open the guts of the TV and had to have some skill at repair, or take it to the repair shop and pay through the dang nose. Today you also have one heck of a better picture and stereo sound to go with your pick a cabinet TV. Or, you could have a computer lying it's circuits off "I'm a TV, I'm a Stereo, I'm a Game System!"

[Ziggurat]

Or landfills are full of stuff that is chearper to replace than to repair. How did we get into the mess where a $500 item is a "throw-away"?

In one sense, it's ridiculous to complain about this. It's a sign of affluence, and why complain about being affluent? When you want something repaired, the repair requires skilled labor, and there's a floor to how low that cost can be. And it's not that low. But unlike repair, original manufacturing can be largely automated, and so the floor for that cost can be VERY low. If the problem is that replacement costs have dropped below repair costs, then the obvious solution is to make things more expensive in the first place. Thanks, but no thanks. I like the problem better than that solution.

The only real alternative is for people to start doing more of their own repairs. If you had fixed your TV on your own, you probably could have done it a lot cheaper. But that's unlikely to happen on any large scale for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that most people don't have the skills or the incentive to get the skills.