Life in the Rear-view Mirror

Reigning in Overconsumption: The Need for Regulations

How do we change a culture of overconsumption and excessive waste?

I did some housecleaning recently (throwing out a lot of junk), and it made me realize the role that technology has played in encouraging overconsumption and generating excessive waste. Lots of it! Should technology lead society, or should it be the other way around?

I am old enough to remember the gramophone, nowadays found only in museums and in private collections. Recording music for the enjoyment of others has undergone the most dramatic change that I can think of in my lifetime, although I'm sure there are many others. About twenty years ago, when we moved to our current house, I threw out all the old vinyl records (33 and 45 rpm). It was a collection of wonderful music that I had enjoyed since I was an adolescent, but they were absolutely useless. Record players were passé. Cassette players had replaced them. Does anybody remember the old eight-track tapes? Fortunately I didn't have any of those, but during my recent rampage to clear out cluttered cabinets, I threw out hundreds of single-track cassettes and dozens of VHS videos!

I was thunderstruck! It seemed that videocassettes were a new technology only a few years ago, but they are already relics, replaced DVDs. "What will be next," I thought. And then it dawned on me that they have already been replaced by video streaming. How quickly things have changed!

During my lifetime, to listen to my favourite songs, on demand, I had to buy vinyl records and a record player, then cassettes and a cassette player, and then compact disks and a CD player. In the process, I, and many others, spent a lot of hard-earned money and generated a lot of waste. Was there a significant improvement in sound quality from one technology to the next? If there was, I don't think it was sufficient to justify the consumption of natural resources and the consequent waste that we produced, each time we abandoned the old technology for the new.

The problem is that as soon as a new technology arrives, the old one is discarded. For example, the same companies that produced cassette players stopped manufacturing record players and parts for them. Consumers weren't given a choice. Once the record player needle wore out and could no longer be replaced, the whole record player and collection of disks was garbage.

Technology was leading, or even pushing, us to become waste generating machines. Collectively, we became a huge waste producer! Technology companies did it with a concept known as planned obsolescence. Although it's anathema for our biosphere, it's a great profit generator for businesses that employ it.

Over the years I have seen many mouse trap designs, but none of them have improved on the original. Nevertheless, people still continue to redesign them! But what happened with technology was not just a desire to invent a new mousetrap. The new ones were designed to make the others obsolete, so that more could be sold.

For example, fashion designers of big clothing manufacturers changed styles deliberately so that we would buy new clothes before the old ones needed to be replaced due to wear and tear. I cringed every time I saw the big bags of clothes that my family took to Goodwill because they were no longer in style. I was consoled only by the fact that others would benefit from them, rather than going directly to the city's dump.

This practice of rendering perfectly good products obsolete generates a tremendous waste of natural resources. It also leads me to conclude that garbage is truly the effluent of affluence. Once people become wealthy they have the luxury to increase spending, which increases waste. The more we spend; the more we waste. It's as simple as that!

Planned obsolescence is one of the most heinous practices to make consumers replace things sooner rather than later and no one used it to greater effect than the automotive industry.

A car has many components, most of which can last a lifetime. However, if people only bought one car per lifetime the Ford family, for example, would not be so rich. To force people to buy cars more frequently, car companies designed certain components to last only a few years. When that component failed, it either was no longer available, or the price was sufficiently high to discourage its replacement, so many people bought a new vehicle instead.

For proof that North American cars can last more than fifty or sixty years, one only needs to visit Cuba, where they have learned to make their own replacement parts and still drive fifties era American cars!

In addition to built-in obsolescence, the auto industry learned the importance of changing styles from the fashion design houses and adopted their practices. Every year, American automobile companies redesigned their vehicles so people would trade in their old models for the newer ones. Unlike old world country manufacturers, they put the emphasis on looks and style, rather than durability, performance, and reliability.

Computer companies, in turn, learned from the car manufacturers. They designed their operating systems to work only for the newer computers, so the new software that they and others developed forced people to throw out the old machines for newer ones.

Video game companies made huge profits by forcing people to by new games to play on the new boxes because they were deliberately designed so that the old games would not work in the new ones.

Planned obsolescence works well for the captains of industry, but is a disaster for Mother Earth. It helps to speed up the consumption of natural resources and the contamination of our biosphere for no good reason. The wealthy who benefit from this widespread practice would disagree, of course. They have billions of good reasons stashed in the banks.

Shortsighted governments love planned obsolescence because it contributes to economic growth and tax revenue. The middleclass bought into it because they could afford it. The unions were strong and their members had purchasing power. Moreover, they were not shy about flaunting it. A new car every two years bought a lot of happiness for people who had purchasing power, but not necessarily cash in hand.

Going forward, North America needs regulations as much as it needs the creativity inspired and encouraged by capitalism. Regulations that establish standards for product life and eliminate planned obsolescence are essential to significantly reduce consumption of natural resources. This is a key issue that politicians have successfully avoided addressing under the misguided notion, planted by business magnates, that regulation kills creativity and economic initiative.

We know better. Regulations enforce respect for the common good and for Mother Earth. They don't affect creativity or initiative, but they do affect profits; and that's why we are in an era of deregulation. The powers that be have taken over Government control to maximize corporate profits and executive bonuses. The pendulum has to swing back!

If products are made to last longer we don't have to work as much to replace them. We can enjoy the same music without having to pay for it three or four times; and have more time to enjoy it. Instead of the current vicious cycle of working more to replace products made useless by planned obsolescence, we could have a virtuous cycle of working less, consuming less, enjoying more leisure time, and being better connected with our communities. Imagine how pleased Mother Earth would be!