Repair Cafe is a volunteer organization that applies exactly this insight by holding free "repair cafe" events in which volunteer fixers fix anything for free. There are many local branches, if you are a fixer, volunteer for the next one near you. Bikes, electronics, toys. At the Palo Alto one several women bring sewing machines and fix garments.
While some companies, like Ricoh, DeWalt, Caterpillar and Lenovo have made
repair and remanufacturing a staple of their business model,
This is why I continue to buy Lenovo, even though it can be argued that overall quality and durability of a Thinkpad isn't what it used to be when IBM still owned the brand. When I buy a Thinkpad (like the T440s I bought last year), I am reasonably assured that if something breaks, I can take it apart by myself and replace or repair the individual broken component, rather than having to throw out the whole laptop and buy a new one. Lenovo publishes the bill-of-materials for its laptops online, as well as the repair manual, which makes things a lot easier when trying to match parts. Just this weekend, I "repaired" my laptop's inability to receive 5Ghz wifi signals by replacing the stock 802.11 b/g/n wireless card with a 802.11 ac part. If this had been a Mac or an ultrabook, I would have just had to deal with the limitations of the hardware as it was.
This is also why I buy higher-end Dell laptops. In fact I'd suggest to anyone inclined to see what life they can get out of their hardware, before buying a laptop, see if you can find the service manual online. My current laptop is at least 5 years old now and going strong. Battery life sucks, of course, but that's just a constant for the age of the laptop. I've had to replace hard drives (easy), get a total air-flow-blocking dust bunny out of the fan (service manual was quite helpful, that involved near total disassembly unfortunately), and replace the keyboard. While I could theoretically blunder my way through the latter two, it's nice to have a manual telling you exactly what to do, so you do only and exactly what you need to do. (Every laptop I've had has been different in terms of what you access from the top and the bottom.)
All 5 Lenovo Laptops we had (replaced since then) had a BIOS Rootkit by Lenovo.
NO clean Os, no fancy AV will be of any use. If your not in the mood to rewrite your bios Lenovo will (has proven to)use this backdoor to secretly install malware again and again as they have done again since superfish.
Furthermore it'll leave a big backdoor for everyone right to the core since they abused one of Microsofts Bios features.
Contrary to Lenovos statement: "(ThinkPad, ThinkCentre, Lenovo Desktop, ThinkStation, ThinkServer and System x products are not impacted.) "
The ARE infected, just not every single one.
The lesson they took from Superfish was to secretly install more spy/ad/crapware a couple months later.
I think it's safe to say that no Lenovo product can be trusted.
Parent is probably referring to Lenovo's use of the Windows Platform Binary Table, which allows OEMs to put a Windows program in the firmware. Recent versions of Windows will then automatically run this program on each boot. This is apparently intended to allow persistent remote management/anti-theft software.
Trust is earned not given, and they did a hell of a job to make sure it's lost. I don't have the time (why should i waste time with this in the first place) nor the patience to check every Lenovo product down to the bios.
My first expierience was with a customers laptop about 3 month before Superfish hit the media. Remote location no inet access ... so removing all the malware by hand took about 6 hours and a mental breakdown since some pieces just came back again and again.
I suspected a hidden system recovery partition that would reload some malware functions... don't ask how much time was wasted all in all.
Edit: If you used a Lenovo PC and did any sensitive stuff like online banking, thanks to their MiM attack, they phished your logins and other data or you are willing to believe they put in all this work - compromitting https/hiding in Bios (maybe HDD Firmware, too) to just replace an ad here and there and suuuurely delete anything of ... real value.... that gets cought by accident/technical impossibility to filter.
There are other operating systems besides Windows, you know? And if you insist on running Windows, Dell snooping on you is your last concern - Microsoft is already doing a much more thorough job.
It's true i haven't tested it yet on my DELLs, but these machines sit in a separated Vlan behind a big black blinking box and cannot communicate with anything outside.
But these HP machines could as well run DOS or TempleOS, since the culprit is in the BIOS - you don't even have to boot a kernel to have access your Fujitsu machine from the outside.
Dell, Windows and Abit snooping my habbits is still different than a shady third-party from NewPanama phishing my bank logins, reloading new malware.
Superfish is a root certificate installed by crapware in the preinstalled windows version. It can be uninstalled or removed by a fresh OS install. I guess someone replacing hardware components in a notebook doesn't keep the preinstalled OS for long.
Yeah, that whole debacle does concern me, but I don't think I've ever used the stock OS that came with a machine. Even if Lenovo did have a Debian option, I would still wipe it and replace with my own trusted setup.
The first thing I do on any laptop is wipe the OS and reinstall Windows from scratch. I didn't know about Superfish at the time, but I've been burned enough by bundled crapware in the past that I always include the price of a fresh copy of Windows in the price of the laptop I'm buying.
I would do that, but I don't want to pay Microsoft twice: once for the Windows that came installed on the laptop and once again for another copy of Windows that's actually installable.
I miss the days when computers came with OS installation disks. it's like you actually owned the software.
That's a fair point, but there's nothing stopping you from wiping the OS and installing Linux, either. I'm limited to Windows for work reasons, otherwise I'd have gone that route myself.
I'm a huge Linux fan, and have happily used it for quite a long time. Sadly, however, not all the programs I need to use are available for Linux. Tax programs, for example. There are various other niches as well, where Linux hasn't really caught up yet.
I've used TaxACT [1] since ~2005 with great results. I'll admit that there's still usually one or two other niche programs that don't work on linux, though.
Where do your priorities lie? If there is no suitable laptop which is both completely secure and exceedingly user-servicable & repairable for many years to come, you may be forced to choose.
I want to add an anecdote to inject some reality into this discussion. I bought a wetsuit from Patagonia in 2009 (I think). They were super new to the wetsuit industry and I paid 300+$ during their "half price" sale. Full price was ~600$ and 300 was the price for the top of the line "money is no object" wetsuit.
For someone who surfs a lot (me) wetsuits traditionally last about three years/seasons. Last year my patagonia wetsuit was showing it's age and I brought it to the store. They sent it to their repair shop and the repair folks re-taped every seam, put new knee patches in and installed a new car-key-loop (original suit lacked one) free of charge.
The neoprene is starting to break down and the suit isn't as warm as it used to be. I anticipate I'll get this season out of it and maybe 1-2 more.
The company is fanatical about the quality of the products they produce and even more fanatical about their support/repair for those products.
This brings be to the area of new cell phones. Not good for the environment global warming. Consumer electronics are designed to be replaced which is bad for the environment.
I do not buy that you cannot make a good looking cell phone that is sturdy and allows for component replacement.
The Apple Macbook unibody 2009-2012 has metal screws, you can replace the battery, the memory the storage. Same aluminium metal design with Philips screws must be also be usable on cell phone designs.
Its also conscious to think about the electronic waste and that products we design today are not designed to be recycled. It should be easy for a robot
to disassemble all the components of electronic devices and reuse most of the raw materials so that we have a closed loop where do pollute more as new and faster designs are out.
> I do not buy that you cannot make a good looking cell phone that is sturdy and allows for component replacement.
You absolutely can. And your competitor can build one that's a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter, a little bit more beautiful, and you'll be competing on sustainability while your competitor is competing on "new and cooler".
Unfortunately, I'd bet on your competitor in that scenario.
It may not be terribly straightforward, but it is possible to replace the components of many phones. I've replaced a number of screens, "non-removable" batteries, and boards on phones for myself and friends. Oftentimes they'll give me their broken devices and I'll surprise them with a fix. I just ordered a $5 headphone jack for one of my phones and will be replacing it later this week. Only tools required are fingernails and Phillips-head screwdriver.
Sites like ifixit.com make DIY repairs quite doable. Even just a few pictures of the teardown is enough to make me feel confident in the attempt.
However with that said, I'm eagerly awaiting the v2 release of Phonebloks [1] slash Project Ara [2].
> And your competitor can build one that's a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter, a little bit more beautiful
People keep saying this because it's the excuse given by companies who do it (and who may have ulterior motives). But is there any technical reason why it should be true? How much "thickness" does a modular battery connector really add?
More to the point, it assumes that all customers want exactly the same thing, which is pure bunkum. If all your competitors are solely selling tiny shiny delicate objects that lose 100% of their value upon battery ageing or collision with the ground then there will be some large minority of the market that will stand in line to get something which is 12% heavier because it's more modular and durable than that, and you would be able to claim that entire market segment by providing it.
You're forgetting the recent "phablet" fad. Many consumers seem to have developed a taste for bigger screens and bigger phones.
There's long been a wide range of phone sizes to cater to different tastes and different needs. So making a bigger phone with more desirable features may well be a winning strategy.
Maybe as the CEO of a clothing company I hope she can effect change in the seasonal nature of fashion, so that people aren't pushed to buy new clothes every year --and that clothes be made to last more then one season (via velocity of fashion, or via making compromised clothing fashionable (acid wash, tears, rips, etc...)
People who darn and patch already do what she proposes. It may take off with others, but she can make the industry be less about churning fashion and making things more durable (quality-wise and trend-wise). I mean, what does it matter how durable you make something, physically, if things aren't durable, fashion-wise?
PS. It wasn't "radical" before the 70s, as I understand it. It was typical.
That's literally happening at Patagonia and has been for more than twenty years.
It's worth reading Yvonne's book [1]. In it, he talks about Patagonia clothes becoming fashionable in the 80's which led to a spike in demand, then a trough when fashion shifted and layoffs which deeply hurt him and the company. The reaction was to focus severely on attracting customers that were using the products for utility and to discourage others from purchasing. Wonder why you can't buy everything Patagonia makes in black, like you can for anything North Face? This is why. Wondering why effectively everything they make with a hood has an oversized hood that fits a helmet instead of being geared to bay geeks that have to walk two blocks from their Uber in the rain? This is why.
> The reaction was to focus severely on attracting customers that were using the products for utility and to discourage others from purchasing. Wonder why you can't buy everything Patagonia makes in black, like you can for anything North Face? This is why.
What? A black waterproof coat is dorky, it makes you look like a walking garbage bag. I should know, I have one (it was the only color left in my size). They are popular with people who have to wear them on the job, though, because they look "professional" (I don't mean a cool, adventurous job like mountain helicopter rescue who can wear a red and orange coat, think instead of a security guard who has to patrol the same block all day in the rain.)
> Wondering why effectively everything they make with a hood has an oversized hood that fits a helmet instead of being geared to bay geeks that have to walk two blocks from their Uber in the rain? This is why.
First off, do you not understand how Uber works? Second, you think bay geeks don't wear helmets when they go mountain biking or snowboarding? If anything, they need an even bigger hood to fit their GoPro.
You know, that Patagonia post, obvious brand marketing though it is, was actually working. "Patagonia sure cares about the environment and making sturdy, quality goods like in the good old days", I thought. But now, thanks to your comment, my subconscious will instead remember that "Patagonia are a bunch of sanctimonious jerks". Congratulations on ruining it!
I was talking about the "Repair is a Radical Act" post, and my position, like I said, is that it is brand marketing. Therefore, I am not going to make any active effort: I expect the message to be regurgitated directly into my gullet.
Sure, I don't think they have ever hid the fact that they play the game, what they are trying to do is play it in a responsible manner. Yvon Chouinard's book is worth a read, it's a fine line to tread and, in my opinion, lazy to take the cynical way out. (Not that I think you are!)
I had an LL Bean catalog delivered to me the other day. Almost everything I saw in it was exactly the same designs as twenty years ago - although I will admit I didn't peruse the women's apparel sections that closely. It may not be your fashion cup of tea, but the stuff tends to last forever and a day.
I believe that they still honor their lifetime warranty, either repairing or replacing anything that you buy from them. To the point that it is worthwhile to buy thread-bare LL Bean clothes at yard-sales and thriftshops if you can get a deal.
Do people really darn socks still? Cotton socks are so cheap that I almost don't want to bother washing them, let alone repair them.
I darn the woolen socks my grandma made me. Maybe it's an emotional thing, making socks by hand takes a long time and adding a few minutes for repair so I can continue to use them seems like a small investment.
FWIW, I've got a pair of Patagonia ski pants that are about 12 years old, and they were a replacement for another pair that was maybe 15 years old by the time the ankles, knees and inseam were thoroughly trashed beyond further repair.
Some people are good like that, but many others just want to have whatever is in fashion that year or more modern that year (new and maybe marginally better materials, but perhaps not necessary for the purchaser's expected use).
She has a good idea, I hope it catches on further and hope it permeates into the GAPs, UNIQLOs, ZARAs, Celios, Diesels, A&F, etc... but I'm not holding my breath.
> others just want to have whatever is in fashion that year or more modern that year
Sounds like a problem with people and not with the apparel companies, no?
I understand what you're saying about quality, durable clothing, it's the main thing I consider when occasionally buying new clothes (easy to check by tugging at the seams, looking for loose threads/inconsistent stitching). But ultimately it's up to people to choose that. Then, in theory, apparel companies would follow the market demand.
Unfortunately, shirts like H&M's are so cheap that it's just as easy to buy new ones every year when they fall apart.
The thing is, the fashion companies create and drive fashion trends. I'm not joking either, I've been at conferences where the next "trend" is unveiled, 12 months before it hits the shelves...
I appreciate companies making repairable products, providing repair manuals and avoiding proprietary screws etc. but I think it's overly simplistic to say repair is the default right choice.
It makes sense to strive for efficiency. In some cases repair is the most efficient choice but in others it is not. There are always tradeoffs and sometimes durability and repairability are over-engineering for a particular use case. Individuals are not necessarily well placed to determine the most efficient choices directly. Prices act as a mechanism to incorporate information on efficiency of resource use and cheap disposable items are cheap in part because they take fewer resources to manufacture and transport. If they are sufficiently durable for their intended use then they may well be the efficient choice.
The problem is that current market prices do not accurately reflect negative externalities such as pollution, exploitation of cheap labor, depletion of natural resources, and exacerbation of socioeconomic inequalities. We just dump our trash somewhere and hope that someone else will deal with it someday.
If there's a reliable mechanism to make market prices better reflect such externalities, I'm all for it. But until we've found and implemented such a mechanism on a large scale, a bit of moralizing wouldn't hurt.
Even to the extent that may be true, it does not follow that "As individual consumers, the single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer." as the article claims. There are almost certainly better things most individuals could do.
I think moralizing is actually pretty harmful in the context of environmental issues. It leads to things like wasted resources on inefficient recycling programs, ill advised programs like ethanol subsidies, biased evaluation of the merits of the best options for power generation and other examples of schemes that prioritize moralizing and making people feel that they're doing something over actual positive results.
I would not be surprised if that is truly the most effective behavior change for a group of people to execute on.
I'm sure that individuals among us may be in a position to help our planet in a more effective manner, but the old saying "reduce, reuse, recycle" is in that order for a reason.
I'm sure this campaign brings a ton of branding benefit to Patagonia, but I certainly can't dismiss it as a cynical ploy to take a hypocritical moral stand. It takes a fair bit of courage to take out a huge ad on Black Friday and say "our company's products damage the earth. Here are the numbers. Please don't buy them unless you need to." The world would be a better place if more companies were willing to be that forthright.
In any event, they are literally publishing numbers about the impact of their manufacturing process. So it should be straightforward to determine how optimal her strategy is.
(Incidentally, I'd love to see those sorts of numbers across more industries. For example: should I keep driving my 9-year-old gas car, or should I incur the environmental impact of battery manufacture etc. for a new hybrid or all-electric? If the former, then at what point should I ditch my current car, given how many miles I drive annually?)
You have changed 'individual consumers' to individual.
As a consumer, make the choice to consume goods that cause less harm and then make them last longer. As an individual, there are likely better things you can do, sure.
I agree with you about moralizing - it can be (and often is) harmful. But in this case the advice is sound. Taking care of your stuff, not discarding it just because it is a bit worn around the edges, and trying to repair it instead of just discarding + buying new; is there something wrong with this approach? not sure it is a "single best thing", but it would make a difference. A large one imho.
It's almost certainly not economically efficient for a software engineer to be darning their own socks. Economic efficiency doesn't align perfectly with resource or energy efficiency in an environmental sense but in this example it is still likely true.
There are economic and environmental costs to everyone having the tools, skills and supplies to repair a reasonable range of products. At the least it likely makes more sense to have a specialist perform any but the most basic repairs rather than doing it yourself.
In some cases repairs make sense from an efficiency perspective, in some they don't. All I'm really saying is that it's better to evaluate the more efficient choice dispassionately rather than painting repair as somehow morally superior to buying new.
I'm pretty sure that neither buying new nor repairing is the most efficient choice every time. I also think that it should be a decision based on efficiency and not moralizing.
Buying new may or may not be optimal in any given situation but the resale value is only relevant if you decide to resell, it's not a general argument against buying new.
It's almost certainly not economically efficient for a software engineer
to be darning their own socks.
...or cooking their own meals. Or raising their own children. Or commenting on HN.
I don't know about you, but I don't do a very good job of software engineering 100% of my waking time, even if doing so would certainly be more economically efficient than the alternative. 8 hours a day? Sure. 10 hours? Maybe. 12? Probably not, especially for extended periods.
We all make decisions about how we spend our time, both on and off the clock. Personally, I'm perfectly capable of sewing a loose button while watching TV and still consider it downtime. Even if I could easily afford to buy a new shirt instead.
I agree with you that you shouldn't at all costs repair everything or do everything yourself. But I'll happily assign some of my spare time to maintenance tasks, and I think doing so does make economic sense as well as environmental.
Perhaps the software engineer will become redundant and have to take up darning socks when AI replaces them? It starts to get kind of sketchy when you start dictating how people should spend their time, as if the economy will always take care of them and the environment, so long as they play by the rules of economic efficiency. There are perverse/detrimental incentives in most economies. To suggest that economies and markets are inherently well intentioned seems simplistic and naive.
Environmental economic impact are usually only felt when the damage is so severe it starts to affect the supply chain while a company is still in business, which may take years or decades to manifest. By then the economic cost of the environmental damage may be too great for the company to properly deal with. All too often companies leave behind environmental devastation for others to clean up, and are absolved of the actual economic and environmental harm of their actions. Perhaps it becomes something that society has to deal with through higher taxes, but that just hides the cost rather than including it in the price seen on store shelves.
Current trend in business to business trades is to rent the stuff you previously sold. Like pump manufacturer who previously sold pumps might now sell "liquid flow" and charge by cubic meter. Everybody wins.
The inclusion of DeWalt got me thinking, because I own several DeWalt power tools. Arguably, these are contractor grade tools made to stand up to some abuse. I buy them because it's a well regarded brand name (for the reason above), but typically only after I've validated my need for a specific tool by breaking a cheap one from repeated use. Truth be told, I've never thought about having to repair it (which I could probably do, because I do know there are parts available for them) or sending it off for repair, because even after owning some of them for 10+ years and subjecting them to countless loanings and abuse, none of them have failed on me.
I agree that there is a trade off, but I think it is this: I bought from a respected brand, so that in the event of failure, I can bring it back to the manufacturer (who will probably still be in business), and they can/will fix it (often under an extended warranty, and it's also not unheard of to find tool manufacturers specifically that will repair or replace tools under a lifetime warranty) rather than say something to the effect of "well, we can't fix that, you'll need to buy a new one". If the cost to me as a consumer for this privelege is that they feel the need to take measures that might prevent someone without the right tools from taking it apart so that they can ensure some revenue to keep their parts/repair services running, than I'm okay with that (as long as they aren't trying to sue people for making repairs).
This whole thing conjures up the Apple mindset of providing a consistent user experience, and locking down a device to ensure that consistency. Unfortunately, a combination of factors (outdated legal frameworks, pricing models, etc.) seem to conspire against people who want both a quality product manufactured to a high standard and the ability to tinker and repair (ie. HN users).
I've got absolutely no objection to the information necessary to make such decisions being available to consumers but relying on individual consumers to explicitly evaluate the environmental impact of every purchase is not a scalable solution to environmental problems.
Using the price mechanism, if necessary using well designed taxes or subsidies to price in currently unpriced externalities, is both scalable and done right avoids unhelpful moralizing.
It is your right to believe what you asserted. My experience points me in a different direction; my comments are not directed as criticism, just offering a different perspective. See my comment below that I'm well aware there are personalities for whom the perspective I offer are not suited for.
> Prices act as a mechanism to incorporate information on efficiency of resource use and cheap disposable items are cheap in part because they take fewer resources to manufacture and transport.
I consider the concept of pricing-conveying-information outdated in a world that moves much faster and is far more sophisticated and complicated than earlier ages. The modern drawback with relying upon pricing to convey information is there is a huge latency between pricing and customer-relevant information coming out about the product or service. This latency only gets larger as software-aided and -enhanced customers start grappling with an ever-larger constellation of externalities of the products and services they incorporate into their decisions, as do sellers.
I don't want to find out the BuyItForLife tool I purchased for a premium price is not the same quality as a past generation of buyers bought and recommended, but only after half a decade of market pressure forces the manufacturer to lower prices as the news of their shoddier modern instances start to gradually filter through the public. I want to know before I buy it, and it is the Internet, not pricing, that is gradually forcing out that information asymmetry that exists between sellers and consumers in category after category. It is not pricing chiefly disambiguating the dozens of choices facing Amazon buyers, it is the recommendation data.
Furthermore, repairability and durability in tandem are often consonant with modifiability. The Internet enables hundreds of thousands to millions of people to access and share with each other skills to modify all sorts of products, far faster than before. The barriers to entry to learn product hacking skills like soldering, welding, plastics molding, woodworking, etc., are far lower than someone born just 20 years ago can imagine, and we aren't nearly finished yet with that trend. Product modifiability is essential to not just keeping products out of the landfill, but also future-proofing and adaptability to a user's specific requirements. I hold that such adaptability is essential to confront the ever-complex future we all face.
There is most assuredly a spectrum of trade-offs. In a resource-constrained setting (perhaps below about a middle-class First World standard of living, maybe lower?), I most heartily agree with you that over-engineering every product choice is premature optimization. But the "particular use case" mindset, even when the use case is say 20 years, is a subtle trap. That mindset is a much-scaled-up timescale version of the "why the poor stay poor" time-capital preference decisions. The farther out you can push that timescale, the more you (and your progeny) have an opportunity to escape that trap.
Note I'm not saying buy over-engineered for every single product, even if you can afford that purchase behavior. For specific categories of products however, like objects that are intimately tied to physical human factors, it's a good bet to buy over-engineered where you can afford it and/or it has a positive impact on your productivity. For example, there is unlikely to be a quantum leap in wood planer technology akin to the transition from hand-held to power planers in the near'ish (20-100 years) future; a hand-held power planer you buy today can conceivably be handed down to a few future generations and still deliver the same functionality. Products that can enjoy a quantum leap in functionality from embedded software could be a big exception in the coming decades, though; change from a hand-held to a bench planer, and software could be a significant consideration in the future, for example.
I don't advocate this purchase behavior for everyone. It works best if you have the personality who considers in advance the logistical tail of properly maintaining a purchased product, including proper stowage (often means climate-controlled or at least humidity-controlled), preventative maintenance, ancillary repair tools, and spare parts stocking (a lamentable side-effect of a minority purchase behavior is spare parts are not as readily obtainable in more remote locations, so stocking the most commonly wear and tear parts mitigates downtime). My rough rule of thumb is 1.5-2.0X purchase price for that logistical tail for the time that I own it before passing it onwards. If you don't plan on having children or a similarly close relationship with relatives from a younger generation (nephews/nieces for example), or mentees, then this purchase behavior applies less to you. And so on. Different strokes for different folks, there are no hard and fast rules here, just considerations to weigh.
Finally, we all face the minimal quantums of time and energy in our lives. These products represent embedded time and energy not just to create them, but the buyer's time and energy, to evaluate, understand operation, adopt to idiosyncrasies, etc. Product switching costs these days are increasingly incorporating greater complexities. For an ever-increasing swath of products as software permeates across the physical landscape, it is no longer just a consideration of keeping embedded time and energy from a landfill.
I think you somewhat misunderstand how prices work to convey information. Price on its own has never provided sufficient information to make a purchasing decision. As a one dimensional, discrete numeric value, how could it? It is always necessary for the buyer to use additional information to determine what a particular purchase is worth to them. If it is priced below the value they determine it has to them then it may be a worthwhile purchase. Wide availability of product information and consumer reviews on the internet makes finding the information to estimate a purchase's value to a given individual easier and this makes the price mechanism work more effectively.
What price does convey quite effectively in a hard to fake way is the value to the seller and thus some indication of the resources that went into the manufacture of a product. All else being equal, a more durable product will tend to have a higher price reflecting the greater resources required to produce it.
I don't disagree with much else that you say, with the caveat that I think buying say a wood plane makes sense for relatively few individuals unless they happen to derive particular pleasure from woodwork as a hobby or intend to do it as a business. The 'sharing economy' is a way the internet makes it possible for more people to amortize the cost between them and does change that calculation somewhat by making more efficient use of resources.
The value to the seller is not a function of how much resources were required to produce it, but how much resources the seller can convince the buyer were used to produce it. This is why buying up known, trusted consumer brands like Pyrex and replacing their products with a cheaper, inferior imitation is so profitable.
I live in Asia and can always find a shoe guy or garment lady to fix my stuff for $1-$5. They are found in market stalls or the side of the road somewhere. You can't find as many of these "tiny businesses" in developed countries, perhaps because licensing costs too much to make it profitable, licensing isn't permitted for street vendors, varying climate doesn't make it as easy year-round, or ... Anyway, I really like this about Asia in 2015 and wish it were more prevalent in the US
> perhaps because licensing costs too much to make it profitable, licensing isn't permitted for street vendors, varying climate doesn't make it as easy year-round, or ...
I'm not sure that someone would be able to make a living in the US repairing everyday imported clothing items. The few times I tried to get something repaired by a tailor stop in the US, the cost at US wages was a significant fraction of what it would cost to buy a brand new replacement (made overseas at much lower wages). Admittedly, those were complicated repairs, but everyday clothing is just so cheap (in price and quality) that repairing it doesn't make sense.
It absolutely does. Four years ago I replaced a cheap stamped-steel chef's knife bought for 20.00 with a forged knife bought for 100. I have to keep it sharp and hone the edge, but so far I haven't had to replace it, and it's not even showing signs of wear.
Buying expensive cooking tools is definitely cheaper over time than buying whatever crap gets stocked at the grocery store.
Totally the case with cookware. The difference in quality between my $60 cutting board and my $5 cutting board is incredible. The $5 one has already been trashed, while I've had the $60 one for 7 years now and it's still going strong.
Same for a Creuset that was gifted to me. There's a good chance I'll be able to pass it on to my children, just like my parents passed on their high quality ceramic crockpot to me. Forged knives, copper pots, real sheet pans (not the flimsy quarter inch crap sold at walmart), etc. are all things that last almost forever, even with repeated, high use. You can see why restaurant kitchens almost always go for high quality--the parable of the workingman's boots.
It won't be $1, but once every year or so I routinely take a handful of items down to a local cleaner to fix/replace zippers, repair a split seam etc. The cost tends toward $5 or so per item. (More for things like zippers.) It's certainly economical if the clothing is otherwise in decent shape. Doing a button myself takes a few minutes--however long I procrastinate about it :-)
I agree the overall economics of having clothing repaired isn't as attractive as it was 20 years ago. But it can still work--especially for more utilitarian and better-made gear.
I think it's more that in countries with social security, people aren't forced to work on such low wages (or more precisely, on low income as a self-employed person).
If people have their rent and food and medical care paid for, and have access to a spectrum of free public services, it's not worthwhile to take the toll of labouring and fixing the clothes and shoes for others.
I can typically buy new, good quality shoes (made in Asia by people who have no social security) for the price of one or two simple repairs to shoes. My current favourites are six years old now, made by Ecco somewhere in China, and they show no significant signs of wear outside. I had to have them fixed once when a puppy chewed the heel of one of them a bit.
The problem is bigger in European welfare states than in the US. It's going away, though: the welfare state structures will be ramped down radically within a decade or two.
That basic income still has to be funded somehow, and even without it the public services (plus some self-employed or begging income) of modern welfare state provide a standard of living that is far better than the income of large numbers of people in poor countries. Opening the borders with current welfare structures (or any "basic income" that covers everyone) will lead to insolvency of the public sector and loss of confidence to government by the people who pay taxes.
Welfare system or open borders, choose one. This is a bit simplistic, but there's no escape from this problem.
It's an interesting idea but as someone who owns dozens of their products, I'd love to see them take this a step further: I want to be able to order (for only the cost of shipping) repair parts and fabric for my repairs. For example, my Patagonia roll-aboard luggage is a decade old now and the veteran of hundreds of flights and trips around the world. The burly ripstop nylon is wearing through in spots and you can reach your fingers into the bag through the holes. I can't repair it because of the material thickness--you need a commercial sewing machine. I could take it to one of the local military gear repair places but they don't have matching fabric. What if Patagonia could sell me the long-since-discontinued fabric and replacement parts that I need to do the repairs correctly?
They'll be happy to help you out. Get ahold of their repair department and if they need to it'll get back to the quality department for the special request. They love that stuff.
For those not familiar with Patagonia, they are a clothing company with a long history of environmental consideration and action. Some of their famous decisions were to donate 1% of their revenues to environmental causes, and to shift their entire cotton clothing line to organic cotton. They did an audit of their entire supply chain and were surprised to find that cotton--not nylon or polyester--did the most environmental harm because of the heavy use of pesticides.
Their founder's book is an entertaining business book: Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard.
This tends not to work with electronics which tend to be at least somewhat obsolete by the time you'd repair them--and, frankly, is less economical than it used to be for many items. That said, I do tend to fix or have fixed clothing with a relatively minor issue that is otherwise still good.
I think this largely depends on the purpose of said electronic item. Laptops, especially within the last few years, can be considered fit for purpose despite the advancements made in computer technology and new releases.
There is of course a point at which a repair becomes more impractical than a replacement, but with a good bit of patience and a steady hand, even an amateur repair tech and breath new life into a broken computer.
The idea of "fit for purpose" is pretty important, especially with electronics, as it's easy to get lost in spec competitions when considering the repair or replace decision. When I did Tech Support for a University and would have students bring me broken machines, it was always a personal consultation to determine the best approach for the student. Often they had little or no money to put towards a new machine, and most of the time all they needed was something to write papers on and watch netflix/do facebook-ey things. A newer computer would certainly do all of the above better, but that doesn't mean that first machine couldn't also do it just fine. $80 and an hour of my time to replace a cracked screen beats the student having to spend $400+ on a new laptop.
It's a weird, fine line with modern consumer electronics depending on what is broken - if you can clearly tell what the damaged part is and a replacement less than 1/3rd the cost of a new machine, I'd suggest it's worth investigating the repair option.
A surprising amount of electronics can be fixed just by opening it up and looking for a blown fuse. Replace the fuse, turn the thing back on, and see what happens. About 20% of the time, the fuse will blow again (at which point you're in shopjimmy.com territory). But usually everything's good to go and you can chalk the blown fuse up to gremlins.
My wife has a Nexus 5 which is cheap to repair and replace parts. She's so happy with the phone she doesn't want a new one (Shame Google stopped makeing excellent, upgradeable, repairable and cheap smart phones).
I am a huge Nexus 5 fan, I own one, but it is not cheap or easy to repair.
Also, the Nexus 5X is out, almost identical, but based on the LG G4 instead of the G2, and has a small handful of niftier features, including better battery life.
There is recycling for various electronics components and, in some locales, certain components are legally supposed to be recycled (CRTs, lithium batteries). I don't know the details of what happens in the recycling process however.
Sadly, the process is often to ship to Africa or China and just dump it. There might be some government paperwork that says this particular open-air debris garden is just the storage lot for a proper recycling operation, but often the closest thing to recycling is locals picking through the mounds of trash looking for anything of value.
It can, and it is, but there's only few places on Earth where it makes sense on a larger scale. They do it in China, and I suspect that a lot of old components make their way into new phones, but haven't seen any numbers yet.
Electronic components generally don't wear much, there's nothing that makes them unsuitable for use in new devices except that ordering new parts is probably cheaper thanks to economies of scale.
Come to think of it, maybe it could be changed? Recycling electronic components is mostly about melting the elements off the PCB and then sorting them to correct bins; the latter part is what usually involves humans. With proper design and sufficient automation, maybe there could be a fully-automated recycler that takes random electronics junk as input, and gives out spools of components ready to be used by a pick&place machine?
I have a Macbook Pro that is 5 years old now. I've replaced and upgraded every single component as they failed (battery, SSD, RAM, trackpad and most recently the matte screen when a pixel went dead). It still benchmarks on par with current models. So I don't agree with your comment at all.
I've made repairs and upgrades to a five year old MacBook as well. However, I eventually replaced it primarily for reasons of weight and battery life. I've also repaired an old iPod although I honestly didn't have a lot of use for it after I repaired it because I had newer iPhones.
Certainly compared to clothing electronics do tend to become obsolete but it obviously depends a lot on the electronics and what they're being used for.
Mentioned briefly in the article, but worth repeating here: iFixit (who Patagonia used to publish the repair guides) is a remarkable company. Their ethos matches the article exactly, and aside from the (economical and awesomely useful) electronics repair kits they sell, they are also dedicated to building an open access wiki platform with rich support for repair guide resources.
> All you need is a sewing kit and a set of repair instructions.
Or, more practically for most of us, you pay some guy to repair your stuff.
Look around. There are little shops all over offering services like zipper replacement. They often don't charge much. Make use of them. And when buying a product, consider how repairable it is.
Anybody know what is the status for repairs in Europe/Germany? My jacket is falling apart and I really want to either have it repaired or if I get a new one, I want a company that offers repairs.
Original organization is Dutch: http://repaircafe.org/
Original in English: http://repaircafe.org/en/
Belge: http://www.repaircafe.be/nl/
Palo Alto: http://www.repaircafe-paloalto.org/
Portland, OR: http://repairpdx.org/
Pasadena, CA: https://www.facebook.com/RepairCafe