Switch to a circular economy could protect the environment while generating more value:
In 1924, a cartel of lightbulb manufacturers including General Electric and Philips agreed to artificially limit the lifespan of their products to about 1,000 hours, down from 2,500. The scandal, revealed decades later, came to epitomize the linear consumption model of making, consuming, and then discarding products that took hold during the Industrial Revolution and has been dominant ever since.
It may have enriched individual firms, but this system is reaching a dead end. It's economically inefficient and environmentally damaging. Its costs range from the pollution of air, land, and water to sharp fluctuations in the prices of raw materials and potential disruptions to supply chains.
"The linear model depletes the planet of its natural resources, it damages ecosystems, and creates lots of waste and pollution in the process. It's an unsustainable model. It cannot continue," says Barchi Gillai, the associate director of the Value Chain Innovation Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
In a new white paper, Gillai and her colleagues find that a growing number of companies are realizing the urgency of shifting their operations toward circularity. This means designing products for durability and recyclability, reducing material requirements, consuming fewer resources in manufacturing and shipping, and keeping items in circulation to boost their lifespan.
And the transition to a circular economy need not come at an economic cost; it can help companies generate more value from the resources they consume. With fewer mines, landfills, and incinerators, and more trees, the circular economy reduces waste and environmental harm. But there are several business benefits, too—lower operating costs, reduced supply chain risks, additional revenue streams, and access to new markets.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Saturday July 30 2022, @10:33AM (1 child)
The cartel is limiting the lifespan of LED lights [hackaday.com].
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday July 31 2022, @04:26PM
It costs money to buy longer lifetime electrolytic capacitors, longer lifetime LEDs, and to (as that article notes) run more LEDs at lower current so they don't overheat.
Personally, I have looked for higher quality LED bulbs at a higher price, but it's somewhat difficult to find such a product that is advertised in a way that I can be sure about it.
One really annoying thing right now is that my LED bulbs occasionally pulsate. I'm guessing it's when some noisy load is on in the house (TRIAC controlled heating element???). But how the heck do I find a bulb that doesn't pulsate in that situation... They probably all have terrible power factor too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday July 30 2022, @11:22AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 30 2022, @02:14PM (1 child)
When the extraction to landfill players have positional and political advantage with tax subsidies, dramatically reduced costs of resources (passing the externalized costs to future generations) and the same for waste piling, of course they collect more money than a system that pays its own expenses up front.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Saturday July 30 2022, @10:18PM
Protip: one can also say the same about the education you got in order to write that. There's costs to everything. Not much point in talking about externalized costs to future generations when you're roundly ignoring the externalized benefits.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2022, @01:48PM (1 child)
Relative to:
>...artificially limit the lifespan of their products to about 1,000 hours, down from 2,500
I remember (1970s?) using long life incandescent bulbs in places where it was difficult to change the bulb, from memory they were rated 130V instead of 115 or 120V (the nominal mains voltage in USA). The downside was very reddish color (lower filament temperature), not very good light.
While the collusion noted in tfa was probably real, perhaps the 1000 hour bulbs also got us better quality light?
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Sunday July 31 2022, @04:30PM
I took a course titled "electrical energy conversion". The professor told us that he hasn't changed an incandescent bulb in his house in over 10 years. He said that what breaks incandescents is the inrush current when you first turn them on. The cold filament has a lower resistance, so there's a large current when you close the light switch. This current heats the filament, raising its resistance, causing a decrease in current; eventually the filament current and temperature stabilize. His trick was to use a dimmer on every set of incandescent lights and only turn them up slowly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by srobert on Saturday July 30 2022, @03:02PM (4 children)
"And the transition to a circular economy need not come at an economic cost; it can help companies ... lower operating costs..."
No costs to company executives and stockholders perhaps, but by definition "lower operating costs" means someone somewhere is losing their income. If the light bulbs last forever, the factory that makes them needs little labor.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday July 30 2022, @06:01PM (2 children)
... and yet total wealth increases.
If you're embracing planned obsolescence as an economic driver, you're in exactly the same position as hiring someone to break windows to stimulate the window repair business.
It's an immediate short-term benefit for the manufacturer and their employees, but the net effect is to reduce the wealth of society. It's not like the money spent on replacement bulbs suddenly disappears if they last forever - it gets spent on other things instead.
You need fewer light bulb factories, but that frees up both capital to provide other goods and services, and spending money to buy them.
(Score: 3, Touché) by mhajicek on Saturday July 30 2022, @08:35PM (1 child)
The modern equivalent: you must pay a subscription for the right to look through your windows.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 31 2022, @08:19AM
No, that model is outdated. The new model is: You may look through your windows, but half of the time the view is blocked by advertisements. You can buy a subscription to reduce the advertisements slightly.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 30 2022, @07:17PM
Loss of salaries is lower cost.
Loss of salaries also means more vacation and holiday time, unless, of course it is all committed to shareholder profits and the remaining workers are given more work for less pay, but that would be crazy, right? I mean, we live in a majority rules democracy, right? Who would ever vote for policies that reward a small minority of the population at the expense of the rest? /S
🌻🌻 [google.com]