“Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you?”
(Jeffrey Goines, Twelve Monkeys, 1995)

This article starts with a simple tale about shopping. It is set in the UK, but could be set anywhere where manufactured goods are heavily used. The situations and dilemmas are common enough, but in a nation like the UK where, on average, every single person spends £2400 per year on consumer items (electrical goods, clothing, books, furniture, etc.), the outcomes may be a bit different from what you might expect…

Leon kicks the back of his old Nike training shoes against the upturned storage box he is sitting on. The repetitive “thump” of rubber against the green plastic, temporarily distracts him from the rush of brands and logos he picks out as they move past his view. The classroom is a rush of noise, banging and shouting with end-of-term excitement, but Leon is sullen, envious of the shiny black swooshes and sharp, clean, double-banded Reebok announcements that the shoes of his classmates make in front of him. 12 months is, like, well old. He needs new trainers.

Amy is frustrated. An excellent job in central London with a decent salary, promotion due in 6 months, a social life to die for, and no way she can tell all her MySpace friends her most intimate but public thoughts. A slave to technology, and a slave to her own technophobia, now her PC won’t start; it won’t even beep, for goodness sake! Just a dull hum and a yawning blankness accusingly berating her. It’s just a PC, it’s not as though she does any work on it, but her online world is an escape that she needs oh so often. To hell with it! She opens the Evening Standard she picked up from the railway seat, still warm and crumpled from the last evening suit that left the carriage, and sees the promise of a faster, brighter online world for £499 + VAT. Tomorrow she hits PC World and her life will be back with her.

Gary stands on the dull stone patio looking into a miniature jungle of grass, yarrow, buttercup and dandelion. It’s been 2 weeks since he went on holiday, and while Jennifer unpacks the suitcases, he wonders why he didn’t take the chance on his day off before the holiday to drive over to B&Q and buy the lawnmower that the bugs and slugs fear, and which means that his domestic failings aren’t the talk of the next barbecue. Just a short drive, only 5 miles or so, and there is a Flymo that would cut through the mess in no time. In thought he almost misses the call of his elderly neighbour. Turning to his left he sees a plug and a short length of orange cable flapping mischievously just above the fence, and hears an offer he might have had to say no had he gone to B&Q a couple of weeks earlier. Yes, he does want Anne’s old lawnmower, now she pays the mobile gardener to come and do the work her old back can’t. And he stops for a minute and wonders too whether the local DVD rental shop still has that pre-owned copy of Animal Crossing that Jack wants for his birthday; just time to pop up to town before Jennifer gets him to put on a dark load of washing.

Gordon curses the advertisement that keeps coming up on his screen every time one programme ends and the next begins. Switch To Digital, Get Freeview. He knows all too well that in October there will be no choice and his old analogue TV signal will be as useless as the rolls of “emergency” Kodak film lying in the back room drawer, just in case everything goes wrong and he needs something to record life after technology, he muses. Ah well, nothing ventured, he always wanted BBC Four anyway; a ravenous documentary watcher with a hunger for good information, and no slouch in picking up new technology. But Gordon is sick of seeing Made In China on everything. We used to make things here, didn’t we? So he is putting his coat on and seeing the man at Comet, and demanding to see something at least made less than 5000 miles away, and lo, and behold, something is. That evening, snuggled in front of the TV, watching The World, Gordon smiles at the Freeview box he discovered, amongst all the £19.99 sets, that was made in the UK, and not shipped half way round the world. His discovery.

The glaring lights and dashing colours are washing over Amy. Here and there boxes are carried by, covered with “Special Offer” and “256MB free”, and a Vista that leads to a horizon of infinite possibilities. But all Amy cares about is the Customer Service sign behind her. When she got home last night her poor PC didn’t work, but still had a lovely blue glow, and she couldn’t just throw it away. The cloud of dust blown out of the inside of her machine by the lady in the blue shirt, and the click as something once again found its home was poetry. £50 and a working PC. Now she just needs to find a black cab to the station, and then home to her friends again.

A positive tale of good decisions, or an absurd fantasy that would never happen today? I suppose it depends on your point of view. In another, parallel story, the decisions taken could all so easily have slipped into the easy option of buying something new and ignoring the immense piles of toxic and dangerous waste building up all over the world, the incessant energy demands involved in manufacturing goods and transporting the raw materials and finished products to their destination, and not forgetting the energy consumed in selling and purchasing these same goods. It seems that most of us are caught in the eddying, tightening spirals that increase not only the speed at which goods are replaced, but also the absurdly large range of goods that we consider necessary for modern fulfilment.

Is this our fault?  Partly, yes. There are often suggestions of a cynical ploy by cartels of manufacturers to ensure that goods break down or become outdated before they should - "planned obsolescence" - and while this may not necessarily be the case, there is plenty of motivation for manufacturers not to care about durability any more. Software changes demand hardware upgrades, users of gadgets (or more likely, marketers of gadgets) press designers for more features, trends in the market driven by changing lifestyles require new items with new specifications, and even something so superficial as fashion can make an entire brand obsolete overnight. Planned obsolescence, whether it exists or not, is only an inconvenience to those who actually want their stuff to last for years. The underlying reduction in build quality caused by cheap components, poor workmanship and bad design doesn't really matter so long as we are happy to replace items at breakneck speed.

So what hope is there for breaking out of these spirals that dictate our behaviour?

If we go back to that original figure of £2400 for every single person in the UK, which is about £144 billion a year on non-food items (not including vehicles) then that is an awful lot of consumer behaviour to change.  By comparison, the total value of goods sold on eBay worldwide in 2006 was about $50 billion. The UK accounts for about 10% of the total global eBay market which, assuming about 50% of eBay items are pre-owned (based on a quick survey), totals about £1.25 billion as of March 2007, or less than 1% of UK non-food retail sales.

According to the Association of Charity Shops 93% of goods sold in UK charity shops are pre-owned, which equates to about £500 million per year, or 0.4% of UK retail sales. Given the pre-eminence of charity shops as outlets for pre-owned goods in the UK, it’s not looking good – consumers don’t seem to be rushing out to buy things second or third hand. But hard figures can be misleading and, as we have seen, there is a lot more to reducing consumption than buying pre-owned goods. What about giving them away? At the time of writing 675,000 people in the UK, and 3.5 million people worldwide were registered with www.freecycle.org. It is, of course, impossible to gauge the quantity of goods that are not bought due to people obtaining them on Freecycle, but the fact that around 2% of the adult population of the UK are registered with Freecycle is certainly a hint of its potential.

But there is a colossal battle to be won, against virtually every commercial interest on Earth, that relies almost entirely on people choosing to buy new and replace existing items that they have at a rate that is increasing at currently 5 times the speed of global population growth.

In short, we need to have a completely new attitude to shopping, where reality and conscience takes precedence over the open mouthed acceptance by the public of new goods, and where the people of Earth are prepared to stop for a moment and think about the effect that every single new item that they purchase is having on this planet.

There needs to be a New Shopping Order. Being part of it is simple : next time you want to buy some new trainers, a new lawnmower, computer, digital decoder, anything at all, ask yourself the following questions, in this order:

1) Do I need to buy this thing at all?

2) Can I repair or refurbish this thing, or have somebody do it for me?

3) Can I buy or obtain this thing, or something similar, pre-owned?

4) Can I buy this thing in a more ethical way?

And what about Leon, who wanted new training shoes so badly? Well, he spoke to his mother, who put his trainers in the washing machine and the next day gave him back a pair that looked just like new.

 

In addition to NOT spending money on stuff we don't need, I think people need to think about how they SHOULD spend their money. Charitable giving, education, and programs to protect the environment come to mind. Or, purchase services for tasks you find disagreeable to free up time to walk the dog or coach your kids' soccer team after work. The very best antidote to self-indulgent spending is to have people to love and care for who need what your money can buy far more than you do. :)

Hi Keith

I've just been reading through your blog and am really impressed by the content you've got on there.

I've added your blog to our website at http://www.biggreenswitch.co.uk/green_links_directory as I think what you have to say would really interest our users.

I wondered if you could perhaps have a look round www.biggreenswitch.co.uk and, if you like, mention it in one of your blogs?

Our website is packed with simple, everyday tips and advice on energy saving, reducing and reusing waste, recycling, greener transport options and much more.

It’s our view that there are many people out there who would consider themselves "keen to be green" but either don't know where to start or worry that making a change to a greener lifestyle is likely to involve major inconvenience and expense.

We hope to encourage those people to make that first important step towards a greener lifestyle and to start saving energy and cutting their carbon emissions. Our message is that it's better to do a few small, simple things than to do nothing at all.

As well as the ideas on the site, there are lots of opportunities for those already living a greener lifestyle to inspire and help others to make their own move to green by adding their own advice and suggestions, starting a green blog or helping to answer green-related questions about topics such as saving energy, recycling and more on the site's message boards. If this sounds like it might be for you, we’d love to have you on-board!

Thanks so much for your time.

Kind regards,
Adele

Thanks very much Adele. Very kind words and a great site you have - I will add it to my links with pleasure.

I make a point of not writing simple "do this" articles as there are so many out there already; my job is to try and make people think beyond the obvious, and then use those thoughts in the best way possible. I wish you every success in your ventures.

Keith

Great post!

If the economics don't work, recycling efforts won't either.
As our little contribution to make this economics of recycling more appealing,http://LivePaths.com blogs about people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.

I was debating between mechanical and electrical engineering as my major when I was a junior in high school. I won a National Merit Scholarship and applied to MIT. I got an interview but not accepted so I went to another school for Electrical Engineering.

Looking at the technology there are 3 types of planned obsolescence using a totally literal interpretation of the words:

1. True technological advance is a form of planned obsolescence. When Intel was designing the 8086 processor while manufacturing and selling the 8085 they were, in essence, planning on making the 8085 obsolete. That involved an increase from 8,000 to 26,000 transistors. I see no problem with that.

2. Styling changes which have little or no effect on performance, and sometimes harm, are a form of planned obsolescence. What did the fins on 50's cars do for the aerodynamics? LOL There are books with pictures of car bumpers from the 50's specifying the brand and model year of the car. These changes require retooling factories and increase the cost and are lergely responsible for the price depreciation in the first year of an automobile's life. The wear and tear shouldn't cause a 25% drop in price. But these styling changes often cause repair problems and increase repair costs.

3. The use of cheap construction which reduce the life of the product. This often shows up in the materials used in the interior of cars. I had an Oldsmobile Cutlass. The door handle for pulling the door closed broke loose because the metal in the door was so thin and soft it bent from the stress.. I began noticing other Oldsmobiles with the exact same problem. But the engine of the car ran fine. Am I supposed to believe people are so strong that they put more stress on a door than the gasoline exploding in the engine? ROFL

I came up with these three forms based on observing the technology for 30+ years. I don't think you will find them listed in that manner anywhere. Most products combine all

Keep going, Karl - drop me an e-mail (keith@theearthblog.org) if you have lots to say, I'm always interested. Another example is the huge (for the UK) Mitsubishi L200 SUV "Die Hard 4.0 Special Edition". Hmmm! Wonder how long before the owners decide that buying it wasn't such a good idea...

Keith

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Excellent Knowledge pool