Planned Obsolescence

Planned Obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is when companies create their products to stop functioning after a certain period of time and are difficult or expensive to repair, in order to sway consumers to purchase an updated product more frequently. Planned obsolescence is problematic for numerous reasons.

First of all, customers feel deceived by companies that create products commonly used, intuitive to use, and seemingly helpful, when these products break down frequently. Customers waste their money and large corporations continue to get larger and richer. Second of all, the frequent upgrade of devices leads to more devices being thrown away. While it may not seem like a lot of waste is created from this on an individual scale, on a large scale, this causes the growth of many landfills, further exacerbating the ever growing problem of climate change and global warming. Additionally, manufacturing is using an increasing amount of non renewable raw materials, such as coltan, in order to manually create a battery with a reduced size, therefore contributing to creating products with a short lifespan.

Others view planned obsolescence as a positive aspect of the market and as a part of capitalism. Since new products are constantly being produced, someone needs to produce all of these products. The increasing amount of products leads to an increasing amount of jobs, which is beneficial to the economy. Additionally, the increasing amount of products on the market creates competition between companies which encourages the quality of products to increase.

Others additionally believe that planned obsolescence is not actually a strategy used in the economic market, as it would not be beneficial to the manufacturer. This is because companies will want their product to last the longest and perform the best to encourage consumers to purchase the product from their company as opposed to competitor companies.

History

The Centennial Light bulb has been burning for 121 years, over one million hours. Nowadays, the average time that a light bulb burns for is between 8,000 and 20,000 hours. This is over 50 times worse performance. The first light bulbs, like the Centennial light bulb, were created from carbon filaments, a much thicker material than the material used in newer light bulbs, metal wires. The change happened because light bulbs became more standard for households, so the companies creating them figured they would make more money if people bought them more frequently, thus decreasing the quality of the material and decreasing the lifespan . Lightbulbs became a necessity, so when one ran out of light, a consumer had no choice but to purchase another. This business tactic became common practice in many industries.

Apple

Apple is a company that has been sued for and accused of planned obsolescence numerous times. IPhones are one of Apple's products that are most subject to planned obsolescence. Research shows that whenever a new iPhone is released, the amount of internet searches for “iPhone slow” increases dramatically, indicating that when a new model of the iPhone is released, the old models begin to function at a slower rate. Additionally, when iOS 16 was created to only be compatible with iPhones 8 and up. This was created when the iPhone 7 was three years old and still functioning for many people. This left people unable to have up to date software, unable to download certain apps, unable to benefit from new security updates and left without new user experience features. However, Apple justifies the inability of not being able to upgrade to new operating systems with the incompatibility of new features that require different hardware features such as storage, RAM, and processors . Additionally, Apple designs iPhones to have batteries that last two to three years . After this, the battery life is very short so a consumer either has the option to replace it, or buy a new phone. With repairs being difficult to obtain, time consuming, and expensive, consumers often purchase a new phone instead of repairing it. The cost of the repair and the inconvenience of being left without a phone for five to seven business days leaves it so that people think it is more worth it to purchase a new device. This further exacerbates the negative effects caused by planned obsolescence.

Planned Obsolescence Now

While planned obsolescence is not illegal, many organizations are working towards eliminating it. France created a new regulation that requires certain products to publicize their repairability scores to indicate whether they design their products with planned obsolescence in mind. Laptops, lawnmowers, smartphones, TVS and washing machines must have their repairability score public . This score is composed of scores from 5 categories: disassembly capabilities, repair documentation availability, spare part availability, spare part price, and product-specific category that includes software updates, remote repair assistance and more.

Some companies are working towards creating products that will never become obsolete. For example, Tesla is creating an environmentally friendly initiative that turns a customer’s car battery into energy storage for a house. Tesla also automatically upgrades a car’s software, making it something a customer does not even need to think about. This has a large contrast to companies that make their products unable to get software updates after a couple years.

What you can do

As an individual, it is important to be aware of this concept and make an active effort to not make unnecessary purchases, get swayed by media and trends, purchase from companies that do not utilize planned obsolescence and keep products for as long as possible. It is also important to get educated on this topic and spread this information with many. This will encourage more people to work towards not giving into companies’ implementation of planned obsolescence.