I have had similar issues with new equipment, and it frustrates me to see stuff built so poorly nowadays. I have been told, though, that part of that reasoning is because companies that built their stuff too well went out of business when the market saturated and they weren’t selling any more of that item.

I like to see stuff get the most possible life out of it, and that leads me to look for used items as well that might be built better.

But Alter’s book is just one component of the many steps needed to reduce the potential impact of the Anthropocene extinction. I hope Alter builds on Al Bartlett’s points about the crux of the problem (exponents!) in a sequel edition.

Switching a global growth-oriented economy to a sustainable and resilient economy is not likely to happen without disruption and pain. It will be interesting to see how capitalism might reinvent economic growth from a “make more” economy to a “make better” economy.

So, what’s the CO2e impact of buying the paperback vs. a digital version? Is there a lower CO2e if I buy from New Society Publishers vs Amazon?

I see this planned obsolescence as a real problem too. I have a bunch of old cell phones and computers at home that are mechanically sound but no longer supported by the manufacturer since they obviously wanted to sell me new ones. I also have a bunch of other equipment that quit working (treadmill, TV’s, etc.) that no one wants to repair or are too cheap to repair, but that also shouldn’t be put in the landfill. No one seems to want to recycle them either. Goodwill, Habitat ReStores, etc. don’t want this stuff either. As much as I hate to say it, perhaps we should require deposits on this type of equipment at the time of purchase that are redeemable at repair or recycling centers at the end of their useful life. Obviously the deposit amounts would have to be high enough to justify these centers and to get people to return the old equipment there.
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Allison, I am not sure I understand the comments about syrup. As far as I know, Coke was shipping syrup to regional bottling plants before and after the use of disposable bottles and cans. As far as I now the water has always been obtained locally at these plants. So I don’t think the shift from refillable to recyclable containers had anything to do with that. I guess I will have to buy the book to get into the details, but I generally don’t listen much to architects 😉

Thanks, Avery. I’ve bought hard drives and memory from Otherworld for this and my previous Mac.

This obsolescence is a big – big deal!
I have a 15 year old Mac Pro with dual Xeon processors that is an absolute BEAST at photo processing – still kills it over my newer machines. Last year the video card crapped out and lo and behold – said video card is no longer available (for an original price $4,000.00 computer). Fortunately, I have a talented Mac tech locally who found someone to REPAIR the video card. That ain’t likely to happen again.

But then there was my top of the line 36” LG refrigerator with in-door ice and yadda, yadda, yadda (I had to rebuild my kitchen cabinets to fit the bad boy in). Three years later after the second compressor failure and zero response from LG – into the landfill it went. I took it to the metal recycle depot and they refused it. Landfill – a 3 year old top of the line refrigerator.

Something has to give here.

Roy, yeah, obsolescence of hardware has doomed a lot of equipment that still had useful life left. I had to upgrade from the iPhone 6 to the 8 because the battery crapped out after an update to the latest iOS.