A load of rubbish

Michael.

Michael.

Senior Member
Location
UK (Surrey)
A LOAD OF RUBBISH


Obsolescence.....printers, razors, light-bulbs,
washing machines and even Apples -
products that are designed to be thrown away,
and marketing that's designed to make you not want them.
.


http://tinyurl.com/ncy35d7


.
 

planned+obsolescence+ahead2.jpg
 
That was an excellent video, Michael - thanks for posting it. I've always sat on the sidelines and watched the march of the Throwaway Generation, refusing as best I could to join their ranks. Of course, some things are pretty much forced upon you - packaging materials are what I have in mind - but they're not the only culprits.

I have an upright column floor-fan made by Honeywell for Duracraft - in other words, a company once known for its quality products has been reduced to making low-end fans for the likes of K-Mart.

This fan has a long rotating filter element that both traps dust and circulates the air. The problem is, as I found out the other day, THERE IS NO WAY TO SERVICE THIS FILTER. The plastic casing of the fan is built such that if you attempt to take it apart you won't get it back together again without the copious use of Super-Glue and duct tape.

So you buy a $30 fan, use it for a month or so, then are forced to throw it away because it no longer circulates air, and if it does it's throwing dirt and dust all over the place.

Then you are supposed to buy a new one.

Now just on general principles I will suffer an eternity with large beads of boiling-hot perspiration dripping down all of my crevices before I buy another one of these infernal devices. :mad:
 

That is stupid when there are likely other $30 fans with replaceable/cleanable filters. Takes all the fun out of impulse purchases, eh Phil?

I do think there is a growing trend towards recycling and or re-purposing.
 
R. Zimm said:
That is stupid when there are likely other $30 fans with replaceable/cleanable filters. Takes all the fun out of impulse purchases, eh Phil?

I do think there is a growing trend towards recycling and or re-purposing.
Click to expand...

Luckily it was my roommate that bought it, not me, but I HAVE bought my share of useless items over the years. That's just one of the reasons why I rarely buy anything anymore.

Recycling is big business. We have a few of those days every year when a third-party company is hired by the township to park in the high-school parking lot with their tractor-trailers and "accept" donations of used electronics. These guys then disassemble / "de-process" these items and sell off the gold from the PC cards, shred the plastic and sell it to China, even the glass TV screens get re-used. But they make an immense profit off of this, which they split with the township.

So it isn't purely an altruistic act on the part of either the company or the township - it's a money-making deal, which in turn only fuels the process of planned obsolescence. People see how easy it is to just dump and pump more money into the system, and they keep on supporting the insane spiral of consumer madness.

I'm sure FishWisher will be along shortly to offer an opposing viewpoint ... ;)
 
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