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Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

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Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#271

Post by sokoloff »

logfromblammo wrote: post #191
brianwawok wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps.. but lets say in 10 years efficiency goes up another 30%. So yes even if your current fridge COULD last 20 more years, with efficiency gains the best thing for the environment COULD be to melt it down for scrap and get a newer model. To me this is the really interesting part in all of this. If there was no efficiency gains generation to generation.. say a piece of clothing.. seems pretty obvious to make slig…

The problem is that the insulated cabinet portion of the fridge could easily last 100 years, just by replacing the door seals every now and then. Why would you want to throw that out with the parts that should be upgraded every 10 years for energy efficiency reasons? Those old cars could be made as efficient as new ones by replacing every part in them other than the chassis. That's prohibitively expensive now, but mo…

Some fridges achieve energy efficiency by insulation upgrades and/or by pulling a vacuum against the seal to limit air leakage. Those enhancements might not be easy or possible to retrofit.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#272

Post by sokoloff »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #96
sokoloff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "only" to screw consumers over. IMEstimation, vanishingly few consumers would repair a washer with a bearing failure, most because they assume the service call and repair would be $400+ and the new machine only about double that, so might as well just buy a new one. And the failure mode either sounds dramatic (like a jet engine coming apart in the spin cycle) and/or the machine starts putting brown grease on…

The parent underestimated the costs, you're underestimating the saving. Whilst the first consumer saves €20, or whatever, the item can't be repaired by an onward buyer either making its second-hand cost approach zero. They save €20 off the purchase and lose €100 of the sale at the end of their ownership. Moreover the societal cost is vastly increased as the machine gets dumped (or possibly stripped for reusable parts…

The seal that fails is the small seal on the back of the drum that keeps the grease on the outside of the tub and the caustic wash water from the bearing. It runs (with a spring backer) between the fixed part of the machine and the tub at full RPM, with hot, slightly caustic wash water in it. Those simply aren't lifetime seals and can't reasonably be made to be so.

It's the seal here: https://www.amazon.com/Front-Washing-Machine-Bearing-Repair/...

Not the tub seal, nor any other place where accurate tightening of screws can influence.

PS: I agree with you to a point on the second hand market value keeping some amount of tabs on the pricing pressure in the brand-new market, but I also don't think that very many people actually cross-shop brand-new and second-hand to really keep those markets' prices linked.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#273

Post by sliverstorm »

jernfrost wrote: post #230
sliverstorm wrote: post #199

Earlier 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…

Repair services in any western country will be hideously expensive because it can't be automated and has to be paid western wages, while the products themselves are made in an automated fashion with third world wages. For this repair stuff to work, we have to make it easier to do so that people can do it themselves.

It's a little chicken and egg, the bridal shop was able to command high prices because they were the only game in town and served a luxury segment of the market. As a result less people want to repair clothes. But if there was high demand, there would be a competitive market of general purpose tailor, and repairing clothes would be cheaper & more attractive.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#274

Post by gutnor »

ryandrake wrote: post #166
gutnor wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pessimistic too. However, the labour cost is so huge that it will offset some of your points and only give a slight edge to repair and second hand shops. If you don't have a top of the range, almost new fridge or TV, even phone, repair will almost always come close to replacement cost. And replacement give you back a 2 years guarantee with faster turnaround.

> If you don't have a top of the range, almost new fridge or TV, even phone, repair will almost always come close to replacement cost. I tend to repair everything, and let me say that's not true for the vast majority of my possessions, including cars, appliances, electronics, etc. It highly depends on the nature of the failure, but generally parts are cheaper than replacement. Here are a list of things I've recently…

Wait does any of that include labour ? Because around here you won't find a technician working for less than 50 GBP an hour, parts not included. Or well, you can always find a "guy" that can come around, no guarantee of anything.

That's btw my key argument. If you repair yourself or live in an area with handy undeclared workers, yeah repairing is probably worth it.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#276

Post by un-devmox »

jernfrost wrote: post #192
keeganjw wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of my time in Stockholm. I was there for a few months and saw quite a few homeless people. I don't remember a single one of them being a white "native" Swede. They all appeared to be immigrants. Swedes might brag about their good social welfare (and it's great if you can get it) but it doesn't seem to be applied evenly.

God how I hate the reputation these people give us. They are Roma people from Romania. We are drowning in them in Norway as well. We pay Romania a shitload to help them, but all the money disappears in corruption so Roma people actually find life easier begging for scraps in Scandinavia than living in the country where they have citizenship and their government is supposed to take care of them with Scandinavian money…

You sound like the Donald talking about Mexicans!

So sorry for your reputation. /s

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#277

Post by brewdad »

jernfrost wrote: post #231
at-fates-hands wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Getting the part is difficult, expensive or hard to install. I'm running into this with some of my drones now. The 3DR Iris Plus was released in 2014 and they've already ceased supporting it, less than two years after releasing it. This means no more OEM parts available and whatever is out there right now, is out there. I have found only one distributor who carries parts for this model - so I'm left with either be…

Yeah I think the key to this repair economy is cheap and easy to use 3D printers. They will allow us to make so many needed parts on demand as needed. Alternatively if 3D printing stores were more easily available and the 3D models for all sorts of plastic parts was easily available you could go to a 3D store and have the part printed. In short I think we need to think a bit more about how to organize things than exc…

Wouldn't manufacturers start using more patented, unique parts or DRM or some other solution in order to force continued planned obsolescence?

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#278

Post by Grishnakh »

vkou wrote: post #227
Grishnakh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck getting the dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local governments in America to implement that.

My dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt local government (In America) has managed to pick up my curbside trash once a week, for years. Over the past year and a half, it's also managed to pick up my curbside compost. It's also managed to provide both electricity, and running water. Most of America isn't some kind of lawless hellscape, filled with wandering ghouls, cursed with a hunger for human flesh (Despite what…

>Most of America isn't some kind of lawless hellscape, filled with wandering ghouls, cursed with a hunger for human flesh (Despite what Randian fiction seems to claim.) Mandatory infrastructure tends to work, for some definition of working. (Now, if only the same could be said about Comcast...)

About half of it is. Visit the South sometime and you'll see. A lot of places still don't have recycling, much less compost pickup.

And as for mandatory infrastructure, the entire United States fails here: internet access is mandatory infrastructure in this day and age, just like running water was considered mandatory by the mid-20th century, and the US's internet infrastructure is pathetic (as you admit about Comcast).

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#279

Post by Grishnakh »

logfromblammo wrote: post #210
hlandau wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bad idea. Standards are nice, but companies shouldn't be coerced into using them because there can be legitimate reasons to not use a standard. It prevents innovation not envisioned by the standard. I really think the simplest way to make this sort of thing happen is to increase the minimum warranty period. If 8 year warranties become mandatory, companies will need to be able to stock replacement pa…

Standards can change when necessary, in a way that gives all participants in the market ample warning, so that no one goes bankrupt when the big companies suddenly change direction. When PCI was introduced, motherboard manufacturers gradually increased the number of available PCI slots and reduced the number of ISA slots until the point where most of the market really didn't want that last ISA slot as much as they ne…

The ATX standard is the reason why no one bothers buying desktop computers any more except extremists and gamers. These computers are way too large and inefficient and ridiculously noisy too, because they aren't properly engineered for sound and ventilation (because they're held back by the 90s-era ATX standard).

Everyone's just given up on it altogether and now they use laptops, or worse, tablets.

Even corporate desktops abandoned ATX ages ago and went to proprietary SFF cases.

Re: Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old Stuff

#280

Post by jacobr »

crpatino wrote: post #253
J-dawg wrote: post #6

This 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…

Water has to be processed and transported to your house, and then heated. A modern dish washer is more efficient than hand washing dishes because it uses less water.
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