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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

#241

Post by wahsd »

jernfrost wrote: post #190

This 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…

All we need to do is require manufacturers to be required to keep a warranty on their products as long as the best performing/longest lasting product in it's class.

For example, if you have a radio that only lasts 1 year, but a competitor created a radio that lasts 30 years, you'll need to cover the full cost of shipping, repairs, and reimbursement for the trouble for that long.

It will incentivize good work due to obvious desires not to cover the warranty that long. Of course it would need to be fine-tuned, but the idea is to internalize the costs manufacturers try to externalize.

Alternately, maybe there should simply be a system where industries self-regulate, i.e., with competitive incentives, to record the durability and life expectancy of their products.

If, e.g., it was easily shown that a MacBook Pro lasts around 8+ years where a comparable PC laptop will need replacing after only 3-4 years, the market will take care of the rest. The problem is really one that information is not sufficient to allow the market to function properly and force manufacturers to internalize the shitty products they try to externalize the real cost of onto their consumer.

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

#242

Post by specialist »

TDL wrote: post #232
specialist wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. We must consider the whole lifecycle. My buddy, with genuine compassion, recycles used PCs and gifts them to communities in the third world. I've read some pretty strong arguments that it'd better for everyone if they simply received the newest, cheapest PCs. Sweden's efforts could help (symbolically) by influencing the design of future goods, to be more serviceable, upgradeable.

Not sure what service your friend uses for gifting his electronics to African countries, but I believe most electronics are sent to Ghana then burned for various metals. http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/

He and his students are the service. They deliver the PCs personally and then hang out to help set things up and train the locals.

Edit: Ah. I probably should have wrote that my friend refurbishes PCs for donation. My bad.

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

#243

Post by rojobuffalo »

jernfrost wrote: post #228
lallysingh wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this better? Manufacturers can make rational decisions on tax breaks vs additional costs. Here, they have to compete with a "easily repairable!" label from a competing product. That's hard to price.

If that was an advantage when selling, they would already have done it.

If the cost of repair goes down via tax incentive, then the lifetime cost of a repairable product becomes marginally less expensive. That creates a new advantage for selling repairable products.

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

#244

Post by rojobuffalo »

mseebach wrote: post #99
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…

The idea is great. The problems will be with the implementation, how it will change incentives, any loopholes introduced, cost of enforcement and unintended consequences. What exactly is a repair? Are parts covered, or only labour? Think ship of Theseus. Is an upgrade a repair, can I put a better compressor, rather than like-for-like in my refrigerator when it's failed? Can I have my TV repaired by replacing all the…

"You optimize what you measure". Seems like incentivizing repair itself could lead to problems. Maybe the focus should be product longevity or components that can be repurposed, if the end goal is to reduce waste. In a totally different direction, share-ability could also do a lot to cut down on waste. There are a lot of products in the world where every individual doesn't need to own one, but only needs periodic access.

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

#245

Post by tonyedgecombe »

vlehto wrote: post #145
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…

>This idea seems so sensible it's a no-brainer. I have not heard any "cut VAT" scheme that doesn't sound really sensible. My suggestion would be to cut VAT alltogether so we can save our souls from endless tax cut jungle. But that's not going to happen, because VAT is effectively barrier against foreign goods, important source of government income and can't go progressive. As a result conservatives love it to death.

The reason governments like it is because it is hard to avoid.

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

#246

Post by burkemw3 »

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…

> 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 contaminating the human food chain.

Reminds of: "It's pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it to a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a store, buy it, and bring it home is considered to be less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you're done with it."

https://goo.gl/photos/ccLCuPkvKh99WWvE8

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

#247

Post by thebspatrol »

jernfrost wrote: post #190

This 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…

>one stupid little plastic thing

I got into 3D printing recently and it's wonderful in this respect. I've made replacement parts for several different things.

3D modeling isn't as daunting as I expected either, at least in Fusion 360.

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

#248

Post by wsinks »

floatrock wrote: post #219
Grishnakh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

San Francisco sends its (mandatory) curbside compost up to Napa to grow our wine, and having lived through a couple ballot initiatives and largely-self-infliciated absurdly high rents here, I can think of no municipality that is more dysfunctional or incompetent.

I had no idea that we sent it to Napa. I'm guessing we get paid pretty handsomely for it?

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

#249

Post by PavlovsCat »

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.

For a lot of things and a lot of small repairs/modifications (even just cleaning in some cases), all that's needed to is to use standard screws that aren't super soft. They were invented to allow reservible fastening of things, and they're great, if you're not making them suck on purpose. Unless you're making it even easier than screws, make the screws rock solid and straight forward.

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

#250

Post by Kalium »

athenot wrote: post #167
AJ007 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A alternative approach could be taxing garbage. Perhaps inevitable once sensors become pervasive and cheap enough. Too some extent this is already done and enforced for disposing of blatantly dangerous things. In some cases you could end up in prison in addition to fines, if caught. The more subtle things that add up to a big problem have been given a lot of leeway. Right now it is profitable for many parties to extr…

Unfortunately, there is something far easier and cheaper (from the end user's perspective) to duming in a controlled landfill: dumping in random places. It's been a long battle in many places to get people to properly dispose of their trash in a proper way, it's still way too easy to revert to prior behavior. In many places in the US, people have to pay a private company for disposal or haul their trash to a landfill…

Oakland, CA still has a dumping problem.
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