Rants

Posted on 6 Aug 2009 at 12:30

Many of the announcements companies are making at the moment are about the great job they're doing of reducing the amount of waste they produce.

New manufacturing techniques, materials and initiatives, such as the universal mobile phone charger, are all marketed as environmentally friendly and a way of reducing waste. You can't help but agree to a point, but a large volume of electronic waste is caused by the fact that we throw away kit too quickly.

It used to be that when something broke, you'd call a repair man to fix it. These days, it's often cheaper and easier to replace a broken appliance that to pay to have it repaired.

This, you could argue, is progress. But what about being forced into upgrading? For firms to make as much money as they can, it's in their interest to make you want their latest kit. Apple is one of the worst for this. Take the original iPhone, which had no built-in 3G, even though the necessary chips were cheap and readily available. Call me cynical, but it seemed like a carefully orchestrated plan, so that people would want to upgrade when the 3G version of the phone was released almost a year later.

It's not just phones. TVs didn't change much from their launch until recently. Now with LCD, we've gone through a progression of standards (720p, 1080i, full HD, 100Hz, 200Hz and so on), each with the intention of making us upgrade.

Improving technology is something we all want, but if companies really want to show their green credentials, they should make products that will last, can be repaired cheaply and aren't designed to force us into unnecessary upgrades.

Author: David Ludlow

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