Pablo Pastor Alfonso .
Al hilo del documental de Cosima Dannoritzer "La historia secreta de la obsolescencia programada: comprar, tirar, comprar", recientemente emitada en la 2 de TVE, me gustaría compartir aquí algunas reflexiones.
Se entiende por planned obsolescence, expiration date imposed by manufacturers to shorten the life cycle of their products.
The articles have a natural life cycle, from production to obsolescence and expiration, either from exhaustion, or irreparable breakage.
However, planned obsolescence, shelf life refers to a deliberate and designed from its design by the manufacturer so that things do not last beyond the required time for themselves.
Thus, this lapse can be set using materials that are less consistent, less durable, dead battery, or even introducing chips counters limiting the use to a certain number of times.
Of course, this is a fact never acknowledged by the manufacturers, but which nevertheless has depth and is part of our current consumer society acting as a driver for it.
Gradually, consumers have grown accustomed to assume that things ever last less. We tend to hear phrases like "these engines are not like those before ..." "plates before were really tough and not now" ...
And there is much truth in them. At the beginning of the industrial revolution and until the early twentieth century, manufacturers seeking, as a quality inherent in their articles, durability. The more resistant to the passage of time was a product, the greater the value obtained by consumers, the more prestige for the brand.
But things begin to change in the 20's when manufacturers begin to devise a new economic and production model is not based on durability.
With the emergence of American Life Style, from the 40 and 50, helped by the media, especially television and advertising, the Company, the consumer mindset has changed. Consumers begin to value other qualities of products, most based on consumerism and fashion in the qualities of life, apart from the resistance values \u200b\u200bas time items.
items were purchased both by necessity not always as sometimes by sheer consumerism. This pattern extends to Europe once the World War II, and also works as an engine of economic recovery.
planned obsolescence, goes beyond what a simple fashion and lifestyle. Responds to a deliberate conceptualization by manufacturers to create items of less quality, shorten their life cycles in order to promote consumerism. When a product lasts less, the easier will it be replaced by another in the market. Thus, the consumer will need to renew your appliances imposed damaged, or to join the consumerist tendencies of fashion to "upgrade" their clothing or all types of articles.
born disposal culture, to replace. Repair culture disappears. It's simpler and even cheaper to replace than to repair a damaged appliance. Following
even the advice of the manufacturers, which do not extend the useful life of equipment well beyond the duration of the warranty itself.
As driver of the economy, the obsolescence generates growth by shortening the replacement cycles. The demand for products increases and hence also employment, while there is an economic bonanza hosted by the financial system credit.
All this is accentuated in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first, no doubt encouraged by the growth of economies in developed countries. Despite the usual cycles of crisis, economic growth in this period in developed countries has been more or less continuous. This has led to the "support" of an economic system based on depletion and exploitation of resources and whose engine has been planned obsolescence.
However, the economy based on consumerism, it also has trade-offs. Including resource depletion and waste generation.
According to WWF, we need 1.44 planets like Earth to sustain our current living standards in the future. That is, we are running out of credit and resources that nature gives us, and worse, we're doing in less than a century.
obviously something not quite right. Obviously that growth is absolutely unsustainable. Something has to change. We must look for other new growth models that are not based on the depletion and exploitation of natural resources and people.
The current crisis is showing the depletion of this expansive model as we have known. We can not continue to grow unsustainably.
Fortunately, manufacturers are also beginning to be aware of this fact and there are proposals for "eco" more sustainable, consuming less energy, using recycled materials ... This is one of the ways to find sustainable economy.
recommend viewing the video
"planned obsolescence, buy, shoot, buy " .'m sure will help to change many minds.
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