Repairs are uneconomical because they have to compete with the assembly line. Assembly lines are an incredibly productive way to make identical things. Repairs are typically different. Like Tolstoy said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
251–260 of 336 posts
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#252This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are: 1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive. I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier…
I think you're right about this, but I wonder how feasible this is in a country like Sweden where most of the complicated manufactured goods that break easily are probably produced elsewhere and the population is not big enough for foreign manufacturers to be bothered investing the requisite capital to redesign their products. It might be effective to do this kind of a thing at a European level, where the size of the market is big enough that producers will consider it worthwhile to substantially change production practices.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#253This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities of non-recyclable "stuff". It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and cont…
> Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones.
Only if you use a dishwasher. IF you do dishes by hand, the only cost is water and soap. Strictly speaking from an environmental point of view the time you spend doing it would be considered a "gain" instead of a "cost", given that you will be probably not engaging in modern electronic entertainment for the duration of the task.
In an industrial environment, such as a restaurant, the cost analysis would be non trivial, given the more complex supply chains that businesses have.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#254Funny... I tried to fix an IKEA lamp and finding parts was impossible.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#255This is beginning in the wrong end IMHO. One of the big problems today is that products are: 1) Not made to be repaired. 2) Not made to last 3) Repair manuals are not easily and widely available 4) Manufacturer have monopoly on replacement parts making them extremely expensive. I would instead create tax incentives which encourage manufacturers to make repairable and durable items, and pass laws which makes it easier…
Why tax incentives? We have too many of those already.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's something profoundly wrong when it makes sense to us to extract oil from the ground in the Middle East, ship it to India, convert it into polymer, ship it to China, mould it into knives and forks, ship it to the West, use it once, and then bury it forever underground (or expend energy to smelt it down into lower grade polymer for use in something that will end up in the ground), all to avoid rinsing some meta…
What if it's actually tremendously efficient to do it this way, in a way that is not inutitive to the layperson? There are many many other uses for oil and polymer and shipping capacity, and the plastic cutlery industry can leverage these incredible economies of scale.
It is only efficient because of the tragedy of the commons; The "plastic cutlery industry" can rake in all the profits of the (literal) garbage they produce, but the whole society is left with the cost of disposing it.
One would think that having people pay for the full cost of garbage disposal would steer companies into producing reusable, optimal-duration plastics... but the most likely outcome of this would be a endemic level of littering.
Sometimes the Invisible Hand needs herself a hand.
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#257Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#258This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. (I'm almost dreading the comments explaining why I'm wrong!) The human race is producing unprecedented quantities of non-recyclable "stuff". It's pumped out of the ground as oil, converted into plastics, and after a short life, buried in the ground again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if much of it didn't also end up floating in the ocean, being eaten by animals and cont…
> Anecdotally I've heard of examples where (e.g.) washing china plates has a greater carbon cost than using disposable ones. Only if you use a dishwasher. IF you do dishes by hand, the only cost is water and soap. Strictly speaking from an environmental point of view the time you spend doing it would be considered a "gain" instead of a "cost", given that you will be probably not engaging in modern electronic entertai…
I'm not convinced. Where are you getting that water from? Maybe if you manually drew it from a well...
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's another angle too. For a long time the only tailor in town was basically a bridal tailor. They charged steep prices for simple work on everyday clothing, and wait times were long. Fast forward to today. I had ripped holes in a few pairs of pants, and was wondering if it made sense to have them repaired- I was pretty sure I was going to be charged as much as the pants were worth for a fairly simple repair. Luc…
Nudie Jeans company in Sweden offer free repairs on their jeans. So that's another way to go. (I'm not affiliated with them) https://www.nudiejeans.com/page/this-is-nudie-jeans
Nudie Jeans? Is that a subsidiary of The Emperor's New Clothes Company?
Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> urban dwellers have no place to put a compost pile. Curb-side compost pickup.
Good luck getting the dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local governments in America to implement that.
The small (<40k residents) American city I live in already has weekly curbside compost/yard-waste pickup.