"we work to buy things that are built to die so that we must work to buy more things that will break"
Two weeks ago, my coffee maker broke. It was a electric percolator (I wrote about my preference for it here), made by Cuisinart. It's the third such percolator I've had in a six-year span. One day they just stop working.
I purchased this particular coffee maker 13 months ago. After digging through my receipts and warranties and instruction booklets, I learned Cuisinart has an unusual three-year warranty. To access the warranty, we had pack up the coffee maker, ship it to a service centre, enclose a $10 cheque for return postage, and wait an estimated two weeks. Meanwhile, we had to buy another coffee maker, which, if it will last long enough, could be our back-up for the next time the electric percolator breaks - but is more likely to break well before it is needed again.
The broken percolator was inconvenient, and annoying, and wasteful. But at least I can - presumably - get a replacement from Cuisinart.
Because a vacuum sealer isn't something one uses daily or even weekly, by the time I discovered it was broken, the warranty had run out - while the thing was sitting in the closet. (I tried to get Sears to replace it anyway, without success.) I wish I had put the warranty expiry date on my calendar, so I could have purposely used it prior to that date. It never occurred to me to do such a thing, but in the future, I will.
Now the vacuum sealer works somewhat - better than a plastic zipper bag, but not the way it's supposed to.
Things fall apart
I could go on. And I'm sure you could post your own lists, too. It's not like we're purposely buying the cheapest stuff, either; it's that quality and durability are nearly nonexistent. (When I bought my expensive ergoCentric chair, we discussed the often false value of the cheap price tag.) I find this enormously frustrating on so many levels. Really, it drives me crazy. It's a huge waste of money. It's a huge waste of global resources. It fills the world with trash. I've taken to calling everything I buy "future landfill".
Like most people who care about the planet, I try to minimize my consumption. I don't shop for recreation. I don't buy more than I need. But neither do I live an ascetic life of self-denial. Life is so very short, and I believe we should enjoy simple comforts and pleasures, whatever those may be for each of us.
Allan and I don't fill our lives with gadgets we won't use or clothes we won't wear, but we need computers, a cell phone, conveniences in the kitchen, tools for the yard, and so on. On the spectrum from total simple living to flagrant conspicuous consumption, I think we're closer to the former than the latter, but we're not extreme in either direction.
But however one would characterize our lifestyle, in order to maintain it, we must buy and re-buy and re-buy the same damn stuff.
It's scientific
This, of course, is the living embodiment of The Story of Stuff: planned obsolescence. We all know why it happens. A world filled with advertising trying to induce us to buy, buy, buy is not enough. We must be forced to buy, buy, buy, more, more, more.
Planned obsolescence has existed for nearly a century, but the cycle of buy-break-buy-break shortened tremendously with the advent of cheaply produced plastics in the 1950s (technology originally developed for military uses during World War II), then telescoped further with globalization. In the last decade, and even in the past few years, the product life cycle has shortened even further. AdBusters dug up a historical perspective on planned obsolescence.
Here on this mountaintop
For some people, the response to the frustration of the constant breakdown of everything we buy - as well as the alienation and emptiness of consumerist culture - is DIY or Maker culture. In Maker culture, people eschew cheaply made products and painstakingly craft their own. Reading about this movement, one frequently encounters the idea that buying ready-made products, rather than making objects ourselves, is a function of mass production and the postmodern age. There's a nostalgia for an unspecified past in which everyone knew how to use tools and made whatever they needed. For example:
Humans have been specializing in skills and crafts since the dawn of civilization. When I researched and wrote about ancient civilizations for young readers, I quickly identified specialization as one of the defining hallmarks of civilization itself.
In ancient civilizations, each family did not necessarily make their own clay pots. Someone who was particularly adept at pot-making would churn out large quantities of pots, or would make pots to order, and would trade her expertly crafted pottery for grain and other necessities and luxuries - items which the potter did not have time to make, because she was busy making pots. Some people were scribes, some were blacksmiths, some were engineers, some made glass objects. As new technologies developed, specialists emerged around each one.
In the past (and in the present in less developed areas) people generally made things themselves when they had no choice. Frontier women made clothes for their families, because they were isolated and had few resources. As villages and towns grew, a woman with better-than-average sewing skills would emerge as a clothesmaker. People gave her money or bartered goods in exchange for her expertise. She in turn bought fabric and sewing equipment from someone who made those. She might have baked her own bread, but if her eyes tired from long days plying a needle, she sought an optometrist. She didn't make eyeglasses herself.
As civilization evolved, specialists emerged who "made" intangible services. Teachers, lawyers, nurses, librarians, builders, doctors, engineers - each exchange expertise and services for money. In the hours not spent earning a living, they raise families, they garden, they make art, they write, they go to the movies. It is unlikely they have time to "make their own life tools and understand how the machines that we depend on operate". Their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents likely did not, either.
I'm not sure how the idea emerged that earlier generations worked with tools and crafted objects more than present generations, but I'm pretty sure it's nostalgia, postmodern alienation edition.
If "making your own" is an absorbing and enjoyable alternative for you, that's terrific. Go for it. But for most people, it's not a realistic alternative, and it won't solve the problem of a culture of disposability.
Check out Mr. Businessman
Most writing on disposability and sustainability exhorts us to buy and consume less - something most of us can and should do. Consuming less is important, but it's insufficient.
First, whatever we do buy is created to fall apart, and will fall apart, and will have to be replaced. And second, simple living will represent, at best, pockets of sustainability amid the dominant culture of consumption. Enough people will not voluntarily change their lifestyles drastically enough to make an appreciable difference.
The wasteful unsustainability of global capitalism will not be reversed by handfuls of people buying less stuff. The problem cannot be solved at the consumer end. It can only be solved at the production end.
You've seen those bumper stickers that say "Still have a job? Keep buying foreign!"? The sarcastic implication is if we had only done our duty to "Buy Canadian" or "Buy American," the manufacturing sector would have remained in North America. Rubbish. Corporations do business where it's most profitable and convenient for them to do. North American consumers generally have no choice but to "buy foreign," because that's what's in the store.
Our buying power does not control manufacturing; it's the other way around. We are not consulted, and our collective (but not organized) buying power cannot create wholesale change. As long as it's cheaper to manufacture goods in China and ship them around the globe, that's what corporations will do. Corporations, you will recall, have allegiance only to the bottom line and to their shareholders, not to job creation and certainly not to abstract concepts like patriotism.
And corporations have no incentive to conduct business sustainability or make durable products. They would have to be forced to by law, or induced to by cost.
Peace of mind, it's a piece of cake
It all comes down to oil.
The whole system that brings us ever cheaper, flimsier products is all built on petroleum - both to create the crappy plastic products and to ship that crap around the globe. Eventually there won't be any more petroleum, and if anything gets made, it will have to be made of something else, and closer to home. What will be left of the planet by that time, and how many millions will suffer until then, remains to be seen.
In the book review quoted above, author Giles Slade is quoted:
What if products had to be made with quality materials, had to last for at least 10 years? What if businesses were compelled to employ sustainable practices? What if, along with wage, safety and environmental standards, there were durability standards? What if environmental standards extended to long-term production practices? What ho, government interference in business?! Markets must be free! (Except for bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, no-bid contracts, rule changes...)
Why is the so-called free market, from which relatively few people profit, more important than the planet's resources, which every human and every creature needs and shares?
As long as global capitalism continues and intensifies - if the current system is not replaced with a more rational, just and sustainable one - that is, if we do not exchange capitalism for socialism - we will not see the end of this trend. We will "work to buy things that are built to die so that we must work to buy more things". Landfills will continue to grow. Oceans will continue to fill with carcinogenic plastics. Many people will consume more than they can ever need or use, while many more wither and starve. And things will continue to fall apart.
Subtitles by David Byrne
I purchased this particular coffee maker 13 months ago. After digging through my receipts and warranties and instruction booklets, I learned Cuisinart has an unusual three-year warranty. To access the warranty, we had pack up the coffee maker, ship it to a service centre, enclose a $10 cheque for return postage, and wait an estimated two weeks. Meanwhile, we had to buy another coffee maker, which, if it will last long enough, could be our back-up for the next time the electric percolator breaks - but is more likely to break well before it is needed again.
The broken percolator was inconvenient, and annoying, and wasteful. But at least I can - presumably - get a replacement from Cuisinart.
*
Last week, after inflating the Aerobed for my mother (we try to give her our bed, but she wouldn't take it), I heard the now-familiar hiss of escaping air. Not one hole, but several, all over the bed. We bought this Aerobed last year. And we bought it last year because, when we stayed at my mom's over US Thanksgiving, the previous Aerobed sprung a leak! We estimate this Aerobed has been used five times. And we've already learned that patching the leak is a waste of time. It's the third Aerobed we've purchased since August 2005.*
You already know about my Heys backpack (overview with links to correspondence here). The mesh compartments normally used for an umbrella and a water bottle ripped after three weeks of use. Heys told me this was "normal wear and tear," not covered by the warranty. I complained strenuously and blogged about their bad customer service. They replaced the backpack. The replacement developed the same holes in less than a month. *
We have purchased three patio umbrellas since 2005, and would have purchased a fourth, but some friends gave us one they no longer need.*
We bought a weed trimmer. During the second season of use, it stopped charging. The warranty had run out.*
A few years ago I purchased a food vacuum sealer. I wanted to cook more in batches - soups, stews and other one-pot dishes that can be frozen in portions - and better preserve the flavour and freshness of the dishes. We bought a Kenmore vacuum sealer from Sears, priced at $150. I estimate we used it no more than 15 times before the vacuum stopped working correctly. Because a vacuum sealer isn't something one uses daily or even weekly, by the time I discovered it was broken, the warranty had run out - while the thing was sitting in the closet. (I tried to get Sears to replace it anyway, without success.) I wish I had put the warranty expiry date on my calendar, so I could have purposely used it prior to that date. It never occurred to me to do such a thing, but in the future, I will.
Now the vacuum sealer works somewhat - better than a plastic zipper bag, but not the way it's supposed to.
Things fall apart
I could go on. And I'm sure you could post your own lists, too. It's not like we're purposely buying the cheapest stuff, either; it's that quality and durability are nearly nonexistent. (When I bought my expensive ergoCentric chair, we discussed the often false value of the cheap price tag.) I find this enormously frustrating on so many levels. Really, it drives me crazy. It's a huge waste of money. It's a huge waste of global resources. It fills the world with trash. I've taken to calling everything I buy "future landfill".
Like most people who care about the planet, I try to minimize my consumption. I don't shop for recreation. I don't buy more than I need. But neither do I live an ascetic life of self-denial. Life is so very short, and I believe we should enjoy simple comforts and pleasures, whatever those may be for each of us.
Allan and I don't fill our lives with gadgets we won't use or clothes we won't wear, but we need computers, a cell phone, conveniences in the kitchen, tools for the yard, and so on. On the spectrum from total simple living to flagrant conspicuous consumption, I think we're closer to the former than the latter, but we're not extreme in either direction.
But however one would characterize our lifestyle, in order to maintain it, we must buy and re-buy and re-buy the same damn stuff.
It's scientific
This, of course, is the living embodiment of The Story of Stuff: planned obsolescence. We all know why it happens. A world filled with advertising trying to induce us to buy, buy, buy is not enough. We must be forced to buy, buy, buy, more, more, more.
Planned obsolescence has existed for nearly a century, but the cycle of buy-break-buy-break shortened tremendously with the advent of cheaply produced plastics in the 1950s (technology originally developed for military uses during World War II), then telescoped further with globalization. In the last decade, and even in the past few years, the product life cycle has shortened even further. AdBusters dug up a historical perspective on planned obsolescence.
"Planned obsolescence" may sound like a conspiracy theory but it was once openly discussed as a solution to the Great Depression. In fact, most scholars trace the origin of the term to Bernard London’s 1932 pamphlet, “Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence”, in which London blames the global economic Depression on consumers who disobey “the law of obsolescence” by “using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected”.Researching this post, I learned of a book called Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, by Giles Slade. In a review of the book in Grist, Terry Tamminen writes:
London’s sinister solution was to propose a government agency that would determine the lifespan of each manufactured object whether it is a building, a ship, a comb or a shoe. Those frugal consumers who insisted on using their products past the expiration date would be penalized. London explained his plan simply: “I propose that when a person continues to posses and use old clothing, automobiles and buildings, after they have passed their obsolescence date, as determined at the time they were created, he should be taxed for such continued use of what is legally ‘dead’.” While the regulatory specifics of London’s plan may not have been put into place the spirit of his proposal has been adopted by product designers whose objects are meant to break.
And so we grow old in a world surrounded by things whose disposability is prized above all else. Of course, the need to constantly replace the objects in our daily life has an added benefit as well: it keeps us locked into our overworked, over stimulated and under paid daily grind. We work to buy things that are built to die so that we must work to buy more things that will break. . . .
Only 15 copies of London's pamphlet remain in libraries around the world. No copy is available online. Adbusters has tracked down Bernard London's pamphlet and for the first time ever we are making it available online. [Read the 1932 pamphlet here.]
Among the eye-opening revelations of Made to Break is Slade's account of the anti-thrift campaigns launched in the wake of World War I. During the war, the U.S. Treasury Department initiated a frugality campaign opposed by wary merchants. In 1917, Slade recounts, "stores in every city began displaying signs reading, 'Business as Usual. Beware of Thrift and Unwise Economy.'" And a few years later, New York retailers "launched the National Prosperity Committee, with posters that read 'Full Speed Ahead!' 'Clear the Track for Prosperity!' 'Buy What You Need Now!'" (Those sentiments, I realized, were echoed 80 years later, in the grief-stricken days following Sept. 11, when President Bush exhorted Americans to "go shopping" - to show that our resolve and values had not been shaken.)Evaluating ourselves "by what we display" reminds me of a wmtc essay: on raising consciousness and wanting a new cell phone. I was a bit shocked to realize that - like those idiots in the ads I mock - I actually felt embarrassment by my cell phone, which worked perfectly fine but looked outdated. No need to worry about that anymore. The phone breaks long before any embarrassment can kick in.
An entertaining historian with a conversational style, Slade explores the Depression-era development of marketing campaigns that encouraged rapid automobile replacement and resulted in products designed not to last - a concept called "death dating." By the end of World War II, Americans' self-image and esteem were entwined with the possession of the shiny and new as never before. Then, in the 1950s and '60s, the media began touting a plethora of products whose novelty outweighed their necessity, to a growing - and increasingly affluent - audience. To this day, says Slade, "We evaluate ourselves and those around us by what they display. It's a very hard cycle to break."
Here on this mountaintop
For some people, the response to the frustration of the constant breakdown of everything we buy - as well as the alienation and emptiness of consumerist culture - is DIY or Maker culture. In Maker culture, people eschew cheaply made products and painstakingly craft their own. Reading about this movement, one frequently encounters the idea that buying ready-made products, rather than making objects ourselves, is a function of mass production and the postmodern age. There's a nostalgia for an unspecified past in which everyone knew how to use tools and made whatever they needed. For example:
One of the results of the culture shift has been the fact that some of us have forgotten how to make hardly anything other than dinner and house plants, and a few of us have even forgotten how to do that much.If people enjoy a DIY life, then by all means they should pursue it. However, I believe there's a misreading of history going on. The lifestyle that people want to "return to" never existed.
Maker culture represents the desire of individuals to return to a lifestyle that includes a person making their own life tools and understanding how the machines that we depend on operate.
Humans have been specializing in skills and crafts since the dawn of civilization. When I researched and wrote about ancient civilizations for young readers, I quickly identified specialization as one of the defining hallmarks of civilization itself.
In ancient civilizations, each family did not necessarily make their own clay pots. Someone who was particularly adept at pot-making would churn out large quantities of pots, or would make pots to order, and would trade her expertly crafted pottery for grain and other necessities and luxuries - items which the potter did not have time to make, because she was busy making pots. Some people were scribes, some were blacksmiths, some were engineers, some made glass objects. As new technologies developed, specialists emerged around each one.
In the past (and in the present in less developed areas) people generally made things themselves when they had no choice. Frontier women made clothes for their families, because they were isolated and had few resources. As villages and towns grew, a woman with better-than-average sewing skills would emerge as a clothesmaker. People gave her money or bartered goods in exchange for her expertise. She in turn bought fabric and sewing equipment from someone who made those. She might have baked her own bread, but if her eyes tired from long days plying a needle, she sought an optometrist. She didn't make eyeglasses herself.
As civilization evolved, specialists emerged who "made" intangible services. Teachers, lawyers, nurses, librarians, builders, doctors, engineers - each exchange expertise and services for money. In the hours not spent earning a living, they raise families, they garden, they make art, they write, they go to the movies. It is unlikely they have time to "make their own life tools and understand how the machines that we depend on operate". Their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents likely did not, either.
I'm not sure how the idea emerged that earlier generations worked with tools and crafted objects more than present generations, but I'm pretty sure it's nostalgia, postmodern alienation edition.
If "making your own" is an absorbing and enjoyable alternative for you, that's terrific. Go for it. But for most people, it's not a realistic alternative, and it won't solve the problem of a culture of disposability.
Check out Mr. Businessman
Most writing on disposability and sustainability exhorts us to buy and consume less - something most of us can and should do. Consuming less is important, but it's insufficient.
First, whatever we do buy is created to fall apart, and will fall apart, and will have to be replaced. And second, simple living will represent, at best, pockets of sustainability amid the dominant culture of consumption. Enough people will not voluntarily change their lifestyles drastically enough to make an appreciable difference.
The wasteful unsustainability of global capitalism will not be reversed by handfuls of people buying less stuff. The problem cannot be solved at the consumer end. It can only be solved at the production end.
You've seen those bumper stickers that say "Still have a job? Keep buying foreign!"? The sarcastic implication is if we had only done our duty to "Buy Canadian" or "Buy American," the manufacturing sector would have remained in North America. Rubbish. Corporations do business where it's most profitable and convenient for them to do. North American consumers generally have no choice but to "buy foreign," because that's what's in the store.
Our buying power does not control manufacturing; it's the other way around. We are not consulted, and our collective (but not organized) buying power cannot create wholesale change. As long as it's cheaper to manufacture goods in China and ship them around the globe, that's what corporations will do. Corporations, you will recall, have allegiance only to the bottom line and to their shareholders, not to job creation and certainly not to abstract concepts like patriotism.
And corporations have no incentive to conduct business sustainability or make durable products. They would have to be forced to by law, or induced to by cost.
Peace of mind, it's a piece of cake
It all comes down to oil.
The whole system that brings us ever cheaper, flimsier products is all built on petroleum - both to create the crappy plastic products and to ship that crap around the globe. Eventually there won't be any more petroleum, and if anything gets made, it will have to be made of something else, and closer to home. What will be left of the planet by that time, and how many millions will suffer until then, remains to be seen.
In the book review quoted above, author Giles Slade is quoted:
During the next few years, the overwhelming problem of waste of all kinds will, I believe, compel American manufacturers to modify industrial practices that feed upon a throwaway ethic. . . . The golden age of obsolescence - the heyday of nylons, tailfins, and transistor radios - will go the way of the buffalo.I haven't read the book, and I don't mean to pick on Slade; I'm only using this statement as an example of something I often hear. Many people seem to believe that a dire need will somehow compel people and entire systems to change. This is magical thinking. Boards of directors will not reason, "This is too wasteful for the planet. We must start manufacturing cell phones that last 15 years." If corporations are seeing profits and laws do not compel them to do otherwise, they will not change.
What if products had to be made with quality materials, had to last for at least 10 years? What if businesses were compelled to employ sustainable practices? What if, along with wage, safety and environmental standards, there were durability standards? What if environmental standards extended to long-term production practices? What ho, government interference in business?! Markets must be free! (Except for bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, no-bid contracts, rule changes...)
Why is the so-called free market, from which relatively few people profit, more important than the planet's resources, which every human and every creature needs and shares?
As long as global capitalism continues and intensifies - if the current system is not replaced with a more rational, just and sustainable one - that is, if we do not exchange capitalism for socialism - we will not see the end of this trend. We will "work to buy things that are built to die so that we must work to buy more things". Landfills will continue to grow. Oceans will continue to fill with carcinogenic plastics. Many people will consume more than they can ever need or use, while many more wither and starve. And things will continue to fall apart.
Subtitles by David Byrne
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