on beyondking2011
The
other day, I couldn’t find my computer charger. My computer is my lifeline
to my work, my friends, my music! So I looked everywhere, even in that drawer where this lives. I know you have one too, a
tangle /
of old
chargers, the sad remains of electronics past. How did they end up with so many
of these things? It’s not like I’m always after the latest gadget. My old devices broke or
became so obsolete
I couldn’t use them anymore. And not one of these old chargers fits my computer. Urgh! This
isn’t just bad luck. It’s bad design. I call it “designed for the dump”.
“Designed
for the dump” sounds crazy, right? But when you’re trying to sell lots of stuff, it makes /
perfect sense. It’s a key strategy of the companies that make our electronics.
In fact, it’s a key
part of our whole unsustainable materials economy. “Designed for the
dump” means making stuff to be thrown away quickly. Today’s electronics are
hard to upgrade, easy to break and impractical to repair. My DVD player broke
and I took it to a shop to have it fixed. The repair guy wanted 50 dollars / just to look
at it. A new one at target cost 39 bucks.
In the
1960s, Gordon Moore, the giant brain and semiconductor pioneer,
predicted that /
electronics designers
could double processor
speed every 18 months. So far, he’s been right. This is called Moore’s Law. But
somehow the bosses of these genius designers got it all twisted up. They seemed
to think that Moore’s Law means every 18 months we have to throw out our old
electronics and buy more. Problem is the 18 months that we use these things and
just a blip
in their entire
lifecycle. And that’s where these dump designers aren’t just causing a pain in our
wallets. They’re
causing a globe toxicant emergence. You see, electronics start where most stuff
starts, in mines and factories. Many of our gadgets are made from a thousand
different materials, shipped from around the world to assembly plants.
There, workers turn them into products, using loads of toxic chemicals, like PVC, mercury, solvents
and flame
retardants. Today, this usually happens in far-off places that are
hard to monitor. But it used to happen in my home, in Silicon Valley, which thanks to the
electronic industry is one of the most poisoned communities in the U.S.
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