While I don't know whether the Sony story is true, there is certainly a
trend towards throw-away production that is not a matter of evil
corporations but rather the structure of our market economy. Much of the
cost is in distribution, and the cost of making and shipping a million
coffemakers to Wal-Mart is probably less on a per-unit basis than the cost
of shipping a dozen pots or other replacment items to each of many repair
depots around the world. Thus if something breaks, it is cheaper to throw it
out and replace it than to fix it. The tendency towards big box stores is
causing many problems, and the increased discarding of items that could be
repaired is just one of them.
Fighting this trend will be very difficult. One fix would be to require
deposits that would only be refunded when an item is recycled, with partial
refunds for repairing.
Of course some marketing practices really do encourage waste - the pricing
of printers is an example, it is sometimes cheaper to replace them when the
ink dries up than to buy more cartridges.
Of course our criticisms of industry should be tempered by praise when
merited. I have given up on Epson printers because of this kind of pricing,
but I have a Lexmark laser printer and when it is time to change toner
cartridges I call them up and they have a delivery firm come and pick up the
old cartridge at no cost to me. Whether this is a general practice I don't
know (they do it in Portugal and several other Eurpean countries at least),
but this kind of corporate behaviour should be encouraged, and perhaps even
legislated.
Bill Silvert
Portugal
----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] What's wrong with growth (was: ESA position on
sustainable growth)
To: "Kelly Stettner" <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, July 31, 2009, 10:28 AM
By growth mongerers, i meant corporations. For instance, back in the 1990s,
Sony decided to incorporate planned obsolence of the walkman, so that 1.
they did not last as long as the earlier models and 2. spare parts for
repairs were intentionally made so expensive that it was better to buy a new
walkman. So the number of units sold went up, and with, the company's
productivity as measured by the revenues earned that year.
