Planned obsolescence playing a part in waste?

Tim Cooper is still with us.

Tim - It's a problem because it actually slows down the repair process. Time is money. The longer it takes a repairer to open the bit of kit...

James - My question was more why it's been allowed to be this way that it's so hard to get into these items.

Tim - I think it's to do with a degree of complacency and what's been called the desire for the new., It's the fact that consumers are very happy to replace things because sometimes we actually would quite like something that's new and fresh and shiny and has the latest features. And if it's developed a fault, then not being able to get it repaired or finding it a little bit too expensive to get it repaired is a good excuse for buying something that you really would like to have instead of the old thing.

James - And so let's get into it a bit more of a discussion from earlier. What are some of the main ways that you see out of this throwaway culture we have and moving now towards a more circular economy model?

Tim - Well, I've already mentioned the couple, which is to improve labelling of products so consumers know what they're getting. We know about energy efficiency. We also need to know how long have products been designed to last? Are they designed to last 5 years, 10 years, 15 years? I think there are other policies that are needed as well. We look at the cost issue. Many consumers buy new because the cost of the repair is as expensive, even more expensive than the cost of replacing the item. That can be helped to a degree by changing legislation by, for example, getting rid of VAT on repair work, which has already been done in several European countries. Sweden, for example, reduced their VAT rates several years ago. Czech Republic, others have certainly considered that Britain now has a degree of freedom because of course we're not in the European Union. So that was often an excuse. So one thing is to change the economics to make it more likely. Another way forward is to look at guarantees. Now most people when they buy a product, they're wanting something often which is functional. They don't buy a washing machine because they want a square block of metal with a drum that goes round and round. They want clean clothes. So why not move towards society where you are buying that service, where there's a guarantee that that product will last and put the onus on the manufacturer to design it in a way that if it breaks, they have to pay for it. We need to move towards a society where expectations have grown. In small appliances, nothing will last less than five years. For large appliances, nothing last long, less than 10 years, and ideally a lot longer than that.

James - I'd like to play this clip out now. It's another excerpt from my chat with John Naughton. It relates to the idea that we haven't touched on so far, but was related to all this, which is planned obsolescence have a listen:

John - Planned obsolescence is actually a very old idea, and it goes back at least as far as the early days of the automobile because in the United States, in the 1920s, Henry Ford invented a way of making cars. He invented a production line system, established a way of doing things, which has lasted for a century. Ford was a very utilitarian man. He believed he should produce cars that ordinary Americans could use. He famously said, you can have any colour of a Model T Ford that you want so long as it's black. And then along come other car manufacturers, most particularly what became General Motors, led by a man called Alfred Sloan. And his great idea was that we should harness some of the weaknesses of human nature, which is that for some reason, hard to explain, we are all always trying to keep up with the Jones'. And he came up with this idea that you design each model for a particular life, and the effective life could be a year, even though they could go for over 20 years. What you do is you introduce cosmetic changes from year to year so that people who bought last year's model, they suddenly get worried when their neighbour has this year's model, which has got different fins or it's got different chrome or it's got some different kind of cosmetic changes. And that proved to be very successful. And it came to be known as planned obsolescence where you designed something to have a fixed life.

James - So planned obsolescence, as I was saying, it's a related but importantly distinct idea to making the right to repair difficult. Does planned obsolescence also have a part to play in modern e-waste?

Tim - Yes, it does. I think that this is quite a complex issue because the point about planned obsolescence is that it's an intention, it's a decision to curtail the lifespan of something shorter than which it could be designed to last. So in other words, they're saying, well, we could make it last 15 years, but we're going to make it last 10 years. Although it's far better environmentally to design products that last longer, that will affect the cost and the price to consumers. And many people would counter the argument for increased longevity and increased repairability by saying, well, actually we need cheaper products so poorer people can afford them. And I think that's a very soundly made argument. And it just highlights the fact that the issue is complex and governments have to address issues of social justice alongside environmental issues because to make a throwaway society where stuff is cheap, that has to be solved, and if it means having to increase the affluency of poorer people so that they can afford what are essentials of life these days, certainly for things like washing machines and the like, then the government should look at what it's doing in terms of the growth between the rich and poor, and address that as well as addressing the environmental issues.