Electrical Waste, signs of change perhaps?

[AC/HL]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45969676

[G6Tanuki]

Maybe, but I doubt it'll catch on. Plenty of people I know happily replace their kettles/toasters/microwaves/washing-machines/ovens/tumble-driers not because they're broken but because the old ones don't 'go' with their new kitchen [which replaced the 7-year-old 'old-fashioned' kitchen that was in the house when they acquired it].

I equally remember that back in the early-1990s there were PC-manufacturers [Viglen?] who touted a modular range that was designed so you could easily 'upgrade' the HDD, CPU, memory, graphics, power-supply etc as improved versions appeared - the idea being to protect your initial investment. It didn't catch on, because it soon became apparent that to upgrade the CPU you needed to also replace the memory so its speed could keep-up with the faster CPU, and then you found the bus-bandwidth/clock-rate of the motherboard wasn't fast enough to let you get the full performance out of the newest CPUs. . . . It was cheaper to buy a new system where _everything_ was compatible.

[John10b]

I hope things will change, but in truth I won’t hold by breath!
I regularly visit our local tip, which is under threat of closure.
If I’m lucky I will find a vintage Radio or Record Player, and it gives me great pleasure getting them going.
What shocks me is seeing all the domestic Electrical Appliances, particularly Dyson Vacuum Cleaners, surly they can’t all have burnt out motors.
Our Dyson is about 10years old and still going strong all I’ve done is clean the filters regularly and replaced the belt.
I suppose one of the main problems is cost of labour, often it is said you can buy a new item with a guarantee for the price of repairing the old one. Not sure how that will apply to OLED TVs costing several thousand pounds?
Cheers
John

[HamishBoxer]

10 year old Dyson?My DC01 is 31years old and original motor.

[dseymo1]

My first thought on reading that article was that kettles used to be easily repairable, generally by simply replacing the element (although repair washers or proper tinsmithing coukd be used to fix holes too), and were rarely thrown away. Automatic kettles are a bit more involved, but early Morphy Richards and the like had replaceable components.
Why would anyone replace a well-designed kettle just for the sake if it? It's interesting that 'proper' Dualit toasters still sell well, as do their similarly-styled but less well engineered models. Perhaps most consumers can't tell the difference.

[John10b]

Very well made. What’s your view on recycling?
Cheers
John

['LIVEWIRE?']

As John 10b has indicated, economic factors often apply. A local department store is selling plastic jug kettles, I forget the make, for £12.99. At this price level any repair, even if possible, would be uneconomic. Even with pricier items, spare parts & service info., are often unavailable - at the moment I have a Neostar 'music center'-this one includes a CD recorder, 3 speed belt drive turntable, and 3-band digitally tuned radio. It apparently retails for at least £250, yet I've been told that spares aren't available if the item is over six months old. With that attitude from manufacturers/importers is it any wonder so many items end up in landfill sites?

[David Simpson]

The WEEE EU Directive(Para 47) is legally binding throughout the UK & demands that all WEEE goes to an Authorised Disposal Centre. I.E. a Council or private skip site.
EXCEPT - - certain private individuals can obtain a PARAGRAPH 47 Exemption Certificate ! Contact the Environmental Agency in England & Wales, or SEPA in Scotland. Cost - a one-off payment of under £300. Applicants MUST be Electrical/Technical qualified. They must have a valid & safe recycling plan. It is NOT a carte blanche for folk to scrounge Scopes, Sig Gens, Valve Radios, etc. out of skips - then mercenary wheel & deal them on the internet. Accurate records must be kept, and annual renewals & equipment records submitted. Written permission MUST be obtained from the Local Council, or private Authorised Contractor. Wombling is verboten!

Regards, David

[Refugee]

Flat screen TVs are very time consuming to take to bits. They simply have so many screws that the time it takes to get them open is well beyond economical at best.
I opened a simple microwave and found more than one kind of screwdriver was required. It appeared to have been to make it awkward to open up.
Dysons are a good source of motor brushes for fixing vintage cleaners or even fixing broken Variac brushes. They usually suffer with broken plastic parts that are hard to get replacements for.

[McMurdo]

The mountains of 4-year old appliances that have gone wrong is also rivalled by appliances that have failed either on first usage or shortly after. Our neighbour on the industrial estate used to take pallets of customer returns of toasters, fryers, mixers, hairdryers, clock radios, bathroom/kitchen scales, ipod docking stations, headphones, lighting, slow cookers etc from the well-known supermarkets and if they worked ok, were pat tested then sold on in bulk, or, if they didn't, were sent to another neighbour; the skip company. Those toasters etc were 'granulated' as it was too costly to seperate the plastic and steel parts of the appliances. The piles of returns arrived daily in articulated lorries.

If a toaster costs £6 to buy from China and retails at £12, no-ones going to pay a worker to reach for the screwdriver after 18 months and spend an hour changing an element that costs them £7 plus £4 post and packing.

It's about time people understood (present company excepted) that 'buy cheap' means 'buy thrice' in this day and age and the entire planet will reap the whirlwind of this consumer binge. You heard it here first !

[alanworland]

I find it quite depressing when buying a new product and reading the manual/instructions that one of the first things you read is how to dispose of it!

Alan

[emeritus]

I was intrigued by the mention in the BBC article of the original post of screws that lose their thread when heated.

"Designers have already come up with clever ways to make it easy to take things apart, replace faulty components or, if beyond repair, ensure the materials can separate easily so they can go into the right recycling stream.

They've come up with screws that lose their thread when heated. There's furniture that can be slotted together and apart again. And snap-on casings avoid the need for glue."

[ben]

Interesting that the article mentions a headphone kit. I have been asked by family members to repair quite a few headphones over the last couple of years, there seems to have been a trend for the larger type after the small earbud ones. Sadly, most of what I've seen has been utter junk, flimsy plastic headbands and link pieces for the transducers. And the prices!

For years I've been fixing the Maestro/MB Quart/Tandberg TLH85 type headsets for which you can buy pretty much any piece. Attached diagram and parts list. So the idea is not new. The difference is that these headsets were designed to take abuse in school/uni language labs and broadcasting day in, day out and just binning them was never an option. I'm glad that some of that has filtered through to the consumer sector.

[Terry_VK5TM]

Originally Posted by McMurdo

It's about time people understood (present company excepted) that 'buy cheap' means 'buy thrice' in this day and age...

Doesn't just apply to 'cheap', there is also 'expensive' which is no better.

[Refugee]

Electric toothbrushes are another one.
Once the heads wear out they soon become obsolete and you have to throw the thing away.
Ink jet printers are so bad for breaking down after new inks have been bought that you had might as well throw them away when the cartridges that come with them from new have run out.

[rontech]

Re Emeritus / snap on casings. I have often found that when it comes time to snap off the casing, it is the vital bits that snap off!

[lesmw0sec]

I have a lovely HH 200W stereo amp in the shack. Bought it for a fiver for spares as the seller had removed it from a BBC skip. I mentioned later to the seller that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. He said he was not at all surprised and that it had probably been thrown out because the colour did not match the rest of the rack...

[G8HQP Dave]

I was amused by the idea that it is now possible to patent a repairable kettle. I can still remember the shock my Dad had in the early 1970s when he took our old kettle to the electric shop to buy a new element again and was told that they no longer sold elements because kettles were now regarded as unrepairable.

I used to buy mid-range branded toasters, kettles etc. because they lasted a long time and in some cases could be repaired. More recently I have found that they now last no longer than a cheap item, so I now buy cheap ones instead. Why do formerly decent manufacturers allow their name to be attached to cheap junk sold at high prices? It is a silly business model.

[John10b]

David in his post #8 has guided us in the direction of the regulations and the complex subject of recycling.
What I would like to know, for example, what is the complete recycling of say a Dyson, is the motor and it’s components refurbished,and reused, and then what about a vintage Radio! so many questions.
Cheers
John

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by G8HQP Dave

I used to buy mid-range branded toasters, kettles etc. because they lasted a long time and in some cases could be repaired. More recently I have found that they now last no longer than a cheap item, so I now buy cheap ones instead. Why do formerly decent manufacturers allow their name to be attached to cheap junk sold at high prices? It is a silly business model.

Well, it works to sell things, for a while. Maybe quite a while. I visited a website, "BuyMeOnce", which apparently is part of the push toward products made to last longer or to be repairable. Couldn't but be amused to see that their radio recommendation was the Roberts Revival... yes, the same Roberts Revival that's a common-or-garden Far East chassis dressed up in an MDF case in paper-thin vinyl that seems practically to disintegrate by itself.

I wonder whether Dualit have been harmed by supplementing their range of catering-quality toasters with still quite expensive throwaway kitchen glossies: I'd guess it's done wonders for turnover, and commercial operators probably won't have noticed. Fortunately here we both detest having to discard anything after a short working life. An £8 four slice Dualit toaster from the flea market gave good service for a few years after replacement of a single element, then I was taken by the Brutalist charms of a four slice Rowlett Rutland (and its option of doing three slices when three slices are all that's needed), and the somewhat battered old Dualit stands by for occasional duty if and when the Rowlett is out of service for a time.

Paul