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What You Should Know About Planned Obsolescene

What you should know about planned obsolescence

Posted on January 9, 2017January 24, 2023

This documentary was on my list for a long time, but well, my list of documentaries I still want to see is endless anyway. The Light Bulb Conspiracy is a documentary of 52 minutes (short) about planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence, what? Planned obsolescence of products, it exists. Even though it sounds ridiculous, it really exists. Here’s what you should know about planned obsolescence.

Planned Obsolescence

Planned obsolescence (I have said this word six times already, jeez) means that when companies make products, they make it so that the product breaks right after the warranty. And so, you have to buy a new product. It is mostly done in electrical products. There are two types of planned obsolescence. The first type is the most obvious. The product is assembled so that it breaks at a certain point (an example is a printer that has a hidden extra chip, after a certain number of prints, the machine shuts itself down). I think this is actually forbidden, but well, there are more things that are forbidden but ignored.

The second type of planned obsolescence has to do with fashion. Maybe this sounds familiar to you. You buy the newest Iphone and it costs you a fortune. Yet, a year later they launch a new seemingly better model again. Frustrating, but you decide to keep the ‘old’ phone. Yet, everyone else has the new phone and so it makes you feel less cool (this is what marketing does, it makes you feel like you’re dumb, less cool, ugly, anything to make you buy a new product). And besides that, the software in that old phone doesn’t even work anymore at a certain point. You can’t update it (which is kind of alike the first type of planned obsolescence I described above). Trust me, I experience this with my Iphone 4. Eventually it is considered like a dinosaur. All this creates tonnes of waste, gross!

What to Do About Planned Obsolescence

We can all complain, yes, but what can be practically do about this problem?

  1. Try to use any product you have as long as you can. Check, still an Iphone 4 over here.
  2. Repairing is better than buying a new product. So when something breaks, try to get it repaired. Check, I’ve had to replace the screen a number of times already.
  3. Recycle. Recycling in general is not the solution of the entire problem. But it can be a part of it, when things do break to the point you can’t use them anymore. Check out Stichting Aap to recycle you old phone and do something good meanwhile.
  4. Buy only secondhand or refurbished. Most of the time you get a two-year warranty on those items too.
  5. Save up for something sustainable. If you really don’t want secondhand or refurbished, choose sustainable. Check out Fairphone if you’re looking for a sustainable phone to last forever.

The Light Bulb Conspiracy

The Light Bulb Conspiracy tells you what you should know about planned obsolescence. I wrote a little summary of the documentary for you. Planned obsolescence was founded already in the 1920’s. It was founded by a cartel named Phoebus. Phoebus existed of a group of companies who sold the most light bulbs around the globe (Philips was part of in The Netherlands). The first light bulb invented by Thomas Edison had a lifespan of 1500 hours. This was later improved to 2500 hours, but the cartel wasn’t happy with this. The cartel then set up a plan to make sure that all light bulbs only had a lifespan of 1000 hours. Producers were constantly checked and fined if the lights had a longer lifespan. During the Great Depression Bernard London even had the idea to make planned obsolescence a law. This way consumers would keep buying.

In 1950 there came a new kind of planned obsolescence. Consumers had to be seduced to buy the new product each time, it became a matter of fashion. Brooks Stevens was one of the first to do this with his products and he spread the idea. This is still done today, by companies like Apple (who were even sewed in 2003 because of this). The waste is mostly shipped to third world countries under the name of ‘secondhand goods’. The consequences are terrible. Waste is dumped everywhere and it creates dead zones. Overconsumption is one of the biggest challenges of our time.

That’s all you should know about planned obsolescence if you’d ask me!

Yours sincerely,
Romee

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when a teen goes green

Hi! My name is Romee Hoeksma and I am on a journey to an eco-positive life. An eco-positive lifestyle is a lifestyle in which I have a more positive than negative impact on the beautiful planet earth. On this blog you can follow my journey to a life with only positive impact. At this blog you can find all sorts of things, from tips to recipes to personal experiences, but most of all fun (I hope!). I write about how I want to change the world, but don’t look at it as if I’m judging you. If anything, I like responses from my dear readers the most, so don’t hesitate to contact me or respond to any of my posts!

Yours sincerely,
Romee

Here’s what I posted most recently

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Dit is de route van de interrail die ik maakte de afgelopen maand! Over die interrail staat vandaag het eerste artikel (in een reeks van meerdere) online op mijn blog. Ik deel daarin namelijk mijn ervaring én wat tips en tricks. Je kan het nu vinden via de link in mijn bio 🚞.#duurzaamleven #duurzaamreizen #interrail Dit is hoe ik met de trein van Krásná Lípa (🇨🇿) naar Bratislava (🇸🇰) reisde. Dit was reisdag 3/6 van onze duurzame interrail reis. Ik ben vandaag 25 jaar geworden 🥳. Ik hoop heel hard dat dat betekent dat ik ongeveer op een kwart van mijn leven ben. En wat een verjaardag is dit! Ik mag het vieren in Kopenhagen met mijn favoriete persoon @casperchristiaanse , terwijl ik met de trein door Europa reis 🚃. Ik ben een gelukkig mens. Op naar de 50! Dit is hoe ik van Dresden (🇩🇪) naar Krásná Lípa (🇨🇿) reisde. Niet een bijster lange, maar wel een prachtige treinreis, omdat je door het nationaal park Boheems Zwitserland gaat. Dit was de tweede reisdag van onze interrail (2/6). We zijn op de helft van de interrail. Terwijl ik dit typ zijn we onderweg naar Warschau (8,5 uur vanaf Bratislava). Nog twee bestemmingen te ontdekken, maar wat hebben we nu al veel genoten. Elke dag goed en lang slapen, nieuw vegan eten proberen, bijzonder lang wandelen, spelletjes spelen, weinig schermtijd, genieten van de mooie uitzichten en zon: deze reis is genieten 💜. Dit is hoe ik met de trein van Amsterdam naar Dresden reisde 🚃. De interrail is officieel begonnen! (1/6) Vandaag verschijnt er geen artikel op mijn blog. En de komende twee weken hierna ook niet. Dat is voor het eerst, in de 7 jaar dat ik schrijf. Een heel leuk onderdeel van duurzaam leven is tweedehands kleding. Hier zijn 4 tweedehands outfits die ik droeg in augustus 2023 🌞. Je zag het al in de reel van vorige week: ik ben op vakantie geweest naar Gent, in België. Het was een ontzettende aanrader, en daarom verscheen er vandaag een artikel op mijn blog over de leukste en duurzaamste hotspots in Gent 🌆. Check it out via de link in mijn bio

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