This years Christmas festivities were spent with my family, eating delicious food, watching lots of telly and fighting off a hefty lung infection with fists full of antibiotics. Self pitying over with, I’m glad to report I’m back on my feet and was even willing to be dragged along to the January sales by my better half recently, an event I usually avoid with a mix of shopping induced agoraphobia and mild anti-consumerist disgust. Stories of women fighting tooth and nail for the last pair of discounted *insert brand-name item of clothing here* give me cold sweats, but A was in need of a laptop to work on with deadlines looming so I swallowed my anxiety and we braved the throng…
To my delight, we survived the experience and came home with a new shiny ASUS K72something something for A- an easy improvement on his three previous machines which respectively crashed, crashed and burned their way to obsoleteness (the last machine literally exploded in a fit of sparks and melting plastic).
I appreciate that A has been unnaturally unlucky with his laptops in the past few years, but it also strikes me that modern technological devices are simply not built to last. Certainly, I’m not the first person to consider how transient technology has become. Some conspiracy theorists would go so far as to suggest that technological devices are designed to self-destruct once they reach a hidden use by date (often coincidentally a few days past their warranty) and of course, products do have life expectancies. These are based on anticipated use and some products are simply designed to be more robust than others. Take an average MP3 player for example, these are expected to last three years (though with the demands of fashion and technological convergence, I’d suggest that figure is too generous). It makes me think back to my first tape walkman, which lasted almost 8 years. Reliable as it was, it was damned ugly and I’d argue that we do not expect or even want products to last this long anymore.
I’m currently reading a book called ‘Ethical Marketing and the New Consumer’ by Chris Arnold and have just finished a chapter titled ‘Churn and the disposable society’. Arnold explains the need for a certain degree of ‘churn’ (people buying and replacing things) as necessary to maintain a healthy economy- not only of our own society, but also of those that manufacture and import goods to us. He also says that our expectation and desire for churn is too great and therefore not sustainable- the average 18-25 year old in Britain change their mobile phone every 9 months… That’s a whole lot of phones.
Laptops are probably expected to last about three years now (which puts my MacBook on borrowed time, eep) and are still at such a high price point that people are unlikely to aspire to replace them as often as a mobile phone- but ultimately the churn is still there. Laptops are seen as disposable, A’s experience is testament to this; in all instances it has been cheaper and more convenient to replace the entire machine than to repair it (though he tried) and in the mean time, we’ve been adding to the pile of e-waste building overseas (do a quick google image search of the term for some shocking images of where our technological garbage winds up).
I think I’d be happy to keep the same computer for a decade if I could upgrade it and keep it functioning optimally, but the fact of the matter is that I doubt I could, technology moves too fast.
At some point in the not so distant future my Mac will cease to function and I won’t be able to repair it because it’s past its warranty and doing so would be prohibitively expensive… I’ll be convinced that it’s old, it’s ugly, it’s as obsolete as my walkman and… don’t I want a new one anyway? Churn, churn, churn.
But wait! It’s sustainability, says Arnold, not the churn itself that’s the problem. Breaking the cycle completely and designing computers that last for a decade (or more), would mean the break down of an industry, causing irreparable damage to the economy and unreasonable loss of employment. Instead we should be thinking beyond the first life of a product to its inevitable second life as something else. Something like the Motorola phones made of biodegradable plastic that contained a sunflower seed (but that reuses the whole phone rather than just the case), perhaps? Fridges re-imagined as sofas, IKEA cabinets as rabbit hutches (see IKEA hacker for some inspiring reimaginings of IKEA products), laptops as..? Hairdryers? Plant pots? Solar bird tables? Ski boots? I can’t begin to guess what.
Perhaps perpetuating the churn wouldn’t be so bad if the stuff we bought had the potential to be transformed into something useful?
Rethink, reuse, recycle… reincarnate?
For more on Chris Arnold, check out his website: ecoethicalmarketing.info
ecocomo 