It’s rather horrifying to grasp how much of a buy-and-throw-away society the wealthier parts of the world have become.
Perfectly good printers gets ink refills so expensively that it makes sense to throw away the whole printer, including the perfectly good stepper motors and and they get locked down in software to the point where they are practically broken. Making people just throw away the whole printer and buy a new one…
Bike batteries that are still perfectly good with maybe one dead lithium cell gets throw away in bulk because no one bothers to disassemble and see which cells are still good.
I recently bought an serger sewing machine second hand. Perfectly good machine, powerful motor, all the gears and levers are all in sturdy metal. But the knife and the overlooper was missing. Buying just a new replacement knife and overlooper (3 small pieces of metal that are less than 1cm by 3 cm, and only a couple of millimeters thick) costs more than buying the whole machine (including those parts) brand new.
It’s atrocious that we don’t repair our stuff better, or at the very least give it to countries that would actually care enough to either repair it or strip it down for parts.
give it to countries that would actually care enough to either repair it or strip it down for parts.
I remember watching a documentary about how many European countries that act like they care about e-waste management just ship their electric garbage to third world African countries to be buried underground.
My brother has knack for fixing stuff and it would be dream to be given all these broken quality stuff to repair. Here too, it’s more of a throw it if it broke but since it’s mostly cheap Chinese stuff so it’s hard to salvage anything of them and yet he still manage to do it.
Buying just a new replacement knife and overlooper (3 small pieces of metal that are less than 1cm by 3 cm, and only a couple of millimeters thick) costs more than buying the whole machine (including those parts) brand new.
Yeah, this is why most people throw their stuff. If the required pieces to fix it costs so much without even adding the cost of the labour then it goes in the dump. I mean, that limit is generally 1/5 to 1/3 the price of buying it new, so if it cost more than the thing just forget about it.
Yeah… The world is a pretty bleak place…
It’s rather horrifying to grasp how much of a buy-and-throw-away society the wealthier parts of the world have become.
Perfectly good printers gets ink refills so expensively that it makes sense to throw away the whole printer, including the perfectly good stepper motors and and they get locked down in software to the point where they are practically broken. Making people just throw away the whole printer and buy a new one…
Bike batteries that are still perfectly good with maybe one dead lithium cell gets throw away in bulk because no one bothers to disassemble and see which cells are still good.
I recently bought an serger sewing machine second hand. Perfectly good machine, powerful motor, all the gears and levers are all in sturdy metal. But the knife and the overlooper was missing. Buying just a new replacement knife and overlooper (3 small pieces of metal that are less than 1cm by 3 cm, and only a couple of millimeters thick) costs more than buying the whole machine (including those parts) brand new.
It’s atrocious that we don’t repair our stuff better, or at the very least give it to countries that would actually care enough to either repair it or strip it down for parts.
I remember watching a documentary about how many European countries that act like they care about e-waste management just ship their electric garbage to third world African countries to be buried underground.
My brother has knack for fixing stuff and it would be dream to be given all these broken quality stuff to repair. Here too, it’s more of a throw it if it broke but since it’s mostly cheap Chinese stuff so it’s hard to salvage anything of them and yet he still manage to do it.
Yeah, this is why most people throw their stuff. If the required pieces to fix it costs so much without even adding the cost of the labour then it goes in the dump. I mean, that limit is generally 1/5 to 1/3 the price of buying it new, so if it cost more than the thing just forget about it.