Planned obsolescence is a term first coined in the title of Bernhard London’s pamphlet “Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence” in 1932. In his essay, London suggested a regulatory to be imposed by the government which would subject all consumer products to a pre-defined, limited lifespan after which the product would have to be replaced. Upon caught using beyond their expiration date, he suggested, consumers should even be penalized. His intentions were motivated by the idea, that a major cause for the Great Depression in the 1930’s were consumers’ habit of “using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected” [15].
(Glaubitz, J. P. A., 2011, pg. 3)
London’s concept, while seemingly ridiculous to the critical reader, are widely accepted and calculatingly encouraged by big business. How many times has your iPhone mysteriously stopped working? How long do our appliances last for before we have to replace them? We replace products and a HUGE rate every year (Annie Leonard explains this in the Story of Stuff video). I own a sewing machine that my grandmother brought over to Australia from Switzerland during the second world war. The machine, powered by electricity, belonged to my mother after my grandmother and has now been passed onto me and still works!
So how did we end up with products that lose their efficiency or cease to function within six months of the purchasing date?
The answer lies in a consumer culture. Big companies have a monopoly on the market; they created it and dictate how that market will move. Where big business positions consumers, over time, to want; they convince us we need the newest model, with better battery life, and more functions: “Technology is changing at a rapid pace, we need to catch up to it”, they tell us, and we listen! Our printer requires new cartridges when the old cartridge is half full, and we have to oblige because we don’t know better.
References:
Glaubitz, J. P. A., (2011, July 15). Modern consumerism and the waste problem. Retrieved from http://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~glaubitz/mnses9100_essay.pdf
The Sustainable Consumerist 