Overcoming Planned Obsolescence

People used to fix things themselves. As a kid I remember my dad borrowing a "tube tester" kit from work when the Television stopped working. There were various size sockets that the different vacuum tubes from the Television could plug into.

One at a time Dad would remove a vacuum tube, plug it into the appropriate socket in the test kit to see if the vacuum tube was still functional.

Once Dad had discovered which vacuum tube(s) no longer functioned he would buy replacement tube(s) and then voila! The Television was working again. 

In the Pod Cast "The Good Stuff – Episode 4 Fix it, don't nix it! Annie Leonard, Co-Director of The Story of Stuff Project quotes Erik Weins of iFixit.com, "If you can't fix it, or make it yourself you don't really own it."

She recalled buying a $5 radio with ear buds from Radio Shack a few years ago. A week later one of the ear buds stopped working. Annie decided to replace the ear bud from her stash of electronic parts she had collected. Upon closer examination Annie was disappointed to discover the radio was all one piece. Nothing was clipped or screwed together. If any one part broke the entire object was rendered useless.

"Radio Shack knew that for $5 bucks I could just go and buy another one." Some electronics prevent the purchaser from even changing a battery.

According to Annie 12 months is the average life span of cell phones.

This is called "Planned Obsolescence" a strategy that keeps consumers buying more stuff and throwing more stuff in the landfill. Every dollar spent consuming products with a short shelf life is a dollar not spent elsewhere. So while we may be keeping workers in China employed we also are experiencing a missed opportunity for directing our resources in other ways, like education, travel, local investments or dinner in a nice restaurant.

Annie interviewed Erik Weins who started iFixit.com after opening up his computer to repair a cracked connection and discovering that there was no manual available for putting the computer back together.

Erik's website gives you access to free repair manuals, troubleshooting tips and access to repair technicians who want to help. "Help us teach repair. What if everyone had access to a free repair manual for everything they owned? That's our mission. Share your knowledge and help us fix the world."

Getting beyond planned obsolescence fosters pride of ownership and transforms consumers to contributors.

There is more to iFixit.com website than fixing electronics. You can learn how to patch a hole in your pair of jeans or put the brakes on your car. There are 7,000 repair manuals already on iFixit.com including game consol, apple products, cell phone and car repair. If your iPod goes through the washing machine there are instructions on how to repair it.

Once people start to understand a little more about how things work then you have more power. Erik gives the example of how frustrating it can be to "take your car to the mechanic and the guy works on it and he says hey you have a problem with your rear differential, give me $1500 and I'll fix it. And you have no idea what a differential is or that you have one in the rear or why it should cost $1500. Once you begin to understand how things work you have a lot more power." 

There is environmental value in fixing things verses having to throw broken things away. Repair is a big part of honoring the people and resources that went into making what we have and taking care of the planet by taking care of our things. Recycling is destroying all the energy that was put into something and turning it back into raw materials. Recycling is what you do when you have no other options for making use of something.

When VCR's came out they were cheap and complex. For the first time it was financially more feasible to just throw broken ones away and buy a new one than it was to take the machine to a repair shop.

Erik and those at iFixit "spend a lot of time talking to product designers and engineers trying to get them to think about ways to make them more repairable."

The easiest place to start with electronics are with optional environmental standards. It is really important that if we are going to give a green label to a product that it include being repairable. If we can popularize a self-repair ethos then that will inform the manufacturing industry.