Too many products are easier to throw away than fix—consumers deserve a ‘right to repair’::There was a time when the family washing machine would last decades, with each breakdown fixed by the friendly local repair person. But those days are long gone.
Part of the reason why our environment is suffering is that it takes a lot more energy (which causes pollution) and raw materials (which also take energy and cause pollution) to make and ship a new thing than it does to fix the one you have. Sure it’s not a huge percentage overall, but imagine if every thing you had suddenly lasted 3 or 4 times longer. The sheer amount of new things you had to buy would drop substantially, along with all that’s required to produce and sell them to you.
I feel like it would make a huge difference. They’re planning obsolescence for vehicles and equipment now too. I have a tractor from the 70’s that’s still running fine, why? Because they used to make them with the idea that the consumer can and should be able to perform their own maintenance and repair, for a farmer back then a tractor was a huge purchase and was expected to last many years. I
Meanwhile, the new ones require being brought to the shop for all kinds of things, many can only be fixed with software that most people don’t have, if available at all.
Instead of repairing what they have, companies want people to just buy new stuff every couple of years if not sooner.
It’s just sad when stuff from 50 years ago will still last longer than something you purchase today.
Regarding automotives and equipment, old machinery could last forever really, with the right replacement parts, but those are getting extremely hard to find as well with everyone just buying new instead of repairing what they have. It’s something else…
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