• Look out for petitions to change the law in your country. France already has a law to prevent planned obsolescence, and a director of any company caught in ‘built to break’ tactics can now go to jail for two years and face a fine of up to €300,000 or 5 per cent of the company’s revenue. I believe this should be the law worldwide, and I’ll be fighting to make that happen.
When it breaks
• Let us at BuyMeOnce know. We’re aiming to build up the biggest database in the world on how long products last.
• Tell the company that you’re dissatisfied and write an online review telling others how long that product lasted for you.
• Support your local fixers who still have the skills to mend things. We need more of these people.
• Have a go at mending yourself. (See Appendix I: Care and Repair for advice.)
When buying
• Seek out products that are reviewed independently as lasting longer and those that come with the best warranties.
• Ask a local repairer which models they recommend.
• Buy locally whenever possible to avoid overseas factories with less rigorous standards.
• Vote for durability with your wallet by buying BuyMeOnce-approved products and we’ll soon see more companies upping their game.
• Ask how long a company keeps spare parts for and what the most common repair is, and consider buying that part in advance.
When they strip the quality
• Showing companies that you care about longevity is the key to getting it. Ask about it and talk about it on their social media. Be annoying! It’s often the best way to make change happen.
• Sign the BuyMeOnce pledge, letting companies know that you’d be willing to support them if they made products that were built to last. This will give them the confidence to change their policies.
• Look at independent reviews to see if the build quality has gone down. You can find these at Which?, Consumer Reports, the Reddit ‘Buyitforlife’ thread, BuyMeOnce and Amazon. Check the most up-to-date reviews for any evidence of fading quality. The good news is that people tend to be rather vocal when things don’t meet the standards they were expecting.
• Support innovative companies that want to do better. If you see a gap in the market, either consider filling it yourself, if you’re feeling inventive, or tell BuyMeOnce about it and we’ll put it out as a challenge.
• Support the makers and craftspeople who have a real connection to their products. Crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter help us because they allow engineers and makers to go straight to the customer without retailers or marketers in between. This means engineers who want to make longer-lasting products can offer them to the public, and if we like the idea, it may well get funded.
When they make their products unfixable
• Vote with your wallet and look for fixable modular versions of products. For example, a Fairphone can be taken apart and upgraded easily.
• If you have a product that needs fixing, visit your local Restart Project or Repair Café, or start your own group through online sites such as meetup or Facebook. If you haven’t repaired a product before, seek an expert’s advice first. Some products are perfectly repairable by a civilian; however, electricity is serious stuff, so do your homework and use parts approved by the manufacturer if possible. (For more on repairs, see Appendix I: Care and Repair.)
THE BUYMEONCE #MAKEITLAST CAMPAIGN
At BuyMeOnce we’re campaigning to get companies to tell us how long they expect their products to last and to make the best products possible. Products, rather like animals, evolve over time – features that are successful and useful, like a long neck in a giraffe or a long handle on a frying pan to stop burns, should get taken on by the next generation until the design is perfected.
But then money and trends come in and rather muck things up. Instead of making the ultimate frying pan, companies concentrate on making the cheapest frying pan. What we end up with is something that will serve as a pan for a few months but soon dies. Imagine if the giraffe got the same treatment …
A board meeting at Giraffe-makers, Inc.
‘Right,’ says the product developer. ‘So we’ve worked out that halving the length of neck will take costs down by 15 per cent per giraffe.’
The board members smile and nod to each other.
The head of engineering chimes in nervously, ‘But then … then it won’t be able to eat from the top branches during droughts.’
‘So?’ asks the CEO.
‘So it will starve in a year or so … as soon as the rains fail.’
The head of engineering winces.
‘Yeah, but, like … it’s still a giraffe until then, isn’t it? I mean, we can still advertise it as a giraffe, can’t we?’ The head of marketing lolls her head sardonically to one side and stares at him until he looks away.
‘And,’ points out the CEO, ‘if they fail earlier, people will just have to buy another one!’
‘And we could make them stripy,’ chimes in the designer. ‘Stripes are going to be huge next year.’
When shoppers were asked what their top motivation was for buying a product, price and style came out top. Longevity wasn’t even on the radar.9 This is partly because most manufacturers don’t want it to be on the radar. If they did, you could be sure that every box would shout about how long you could expect the product inside to last. This is exactly what we’re campaigning for at BuyMeOnce.
Imagine going to buy an appliance and having a clear idea of how long it would last. It would immediately be obvious which items were the best value over time. Please join us on this mission by signing the #makeitlast petition at change.org or reaching out to us at BuyMeOnce.com.
Clearly, planned obsolescence isn’t as simple as mysterious people in white coats putting mythical ‘kill chips’ in our blenders to stop them from working the day after the warranty expires. It’s subtler and more insidious. Still, I believe it can be overcome and we can drastically improve the quality of what we are sold if we employ some of the tactics above. The fightback begins here.
