
Can Sweden tackle the throwaway society? - thesumofall
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37419042
======
eth0up
From approx two months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12579879)
\- "Sweden Wants to Fight Disposable Culture with Tax Breaks for Repairing Old
Stuff"

One way or another, something ought to be done.

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ptaipale
I like the idea in principle, but the cost of repairing something is so huge -
due to direct labour costs and related social expenditures - that it is very
difficult to change this balance with just VAT rate adjustments.

Fixing a five-year-old TV might cost 200$ (but you don't know, there's no
guarantee). A new TV costs 300$. Now, if you reduce the VAT for fixing work
from 25% to 12 %, the repair cost goes down to 180$.

Is that big enough difference to change the way people act? Mostly not. We
still realise that the fixed TV might break at another point next week, and
there is no warranty. If I just throw away the old thing and buy a new TV,
it'll have 6 or 12 month warranty and 2 year defect liability. So it's still a
better buy to get a new one.

Plus the new TV probably has more features than the old one.

~~~
SonicSoul
you just came up with arbitrary cost to arbitrary appliance with arbitrary
lengths of time. Unless these figures are based on some statistical relevance
this whole argument is moot.

~~~
jerf
It's less arbitrary than you might think. I've been half-heartedly shopping
for a new TV in the past couple of days and it's amazing what you can get now.
Here's a 49-inch 4K LED TV for $350: [https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-U508CV-
UMK-49-Inch-Ultra-Mode...](https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-U508CV-UMK-49-Inch-
Ultra-
Model/dp/B00S4HI7CO/ref=sr_1_18?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1480280634&sr=1-18&refinements=p_n_size_browse-
bin%3A3578042011)

Sure, it may not be exactly what people here would want, but it's not
necessarily a bad TV, if we hypothesize someone who is choosing between
repairing something 5 years old or buying a new one. With what the TV industry
has done lately, it's almost certainly better than what they're replacing.

And at the very least, you're _risking_ $200 for a repair. Labor may not cost
that much out of the gate, but repair parts can get expensive fast simply
because stocking obsolete panels for several years before someone finally buys
one has a certain cost associated with it. Factor in the risk of expensive
parts, factor in the risk that the repair won't actually work for one reason
or another (misdiagnosis, the repair fixes one worn part but there's a dozen
others ready to break), and it doesn't take much before replacing the TV is
the better choice for the consumer.

That said, TVs are also the worst-case scenario, because TV prices have
plunged lately in a way that even the computer industry would be a bit jealous
of. It makes the case for repair pathologically poor. Many other things have
much better cases to be made; appliances haven't plunged in price, and have
large landfill footprints. Bicycles can last a long time if you care for them,
and bicycle shops have the ability to repair most things quickly enough that
they don't have to charge "by the hour" but can just charge flat fees for
various tasks. etc.

~~~
Swizec
And funnily, most people _do_ repair large appliances, bicycles, and even
computers. Even clothes, when expensive and high enough quality, get repaired
instead of replaced.

It's almost like people already have a decent grasp on when it does and when
it doesn't make sense to fix something.

Nobody demolishes a house and builds a new one when a window breaks. And
nobody throws away a car with a flat tyre or a bicycle with a broken chain.

~~~
mauvehaus
I think you'd be surprised by just how many bicycles with flat tires and/or
broken (actually, usually rusted solid) chains end up abandoned in the backs
of garages, never to be ridden again.

I volunteered for a couple years at the Ohio City Bicycle Co-op[0], and helped
fix for sale countless bikes that needed 15-30 minutes of work to correct
whatever the original problem was.

You're right that a bicycle with busted chain remains viable transportation
given a little elbow grease. That said, people who bought a $150 bike probably
aren't that invested in cycling anyway, and so when it breaks, even with a
trivial repair, it's effectively done for.

I know I'm invoking stereotypes about people who aren't invested in something
and get into it in the cheapest way possible, but easily-fixable cheap bikes
are the bread and butter at OCBC.

[0] [http://ohiocitycycles.org/](http://ohiocitycycles.org/)

~~~
Swizec
You're right, plenty bikes get abandoned out of pure laziness. But I think
most people realize they can be fixed, which is why they're abandoned in the
back of their garage rather than thrown in the trash and replaced.

Right?

For example, my mum has a bike like that. She's been putting off repairs for
some 15 years now. Mostly it just needs some love from someone to adjust gears
and stuff to work again. She knows it's still a working bike so she doesn't
toss or replace. But it's easier to just avoid using a bike than to invest the
energy to fix that one. We've tried a couple of times but it's juuuust bad
enough to need a professional, which increases logistics exponentially.

My point is, abandoned and unused is very different from thrown away and
replaced.

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willvarfar
There are similar systems in Sweden for renovation and house cleaning, so this
can be implemented very straightforwardly. The invoice will contain the
deduction and the repairer will report it to the tax authority. Works really
well.

------
dforrestwilson1
Where I live we have big disposal fees for tires, dishwashers, etc. Isn't that
just the free market form of an incentive? Does Sweden not have garbage
disposal fees?

~~~
kwhitefoot
Do these fees result in more appliances being repaired?

~~~
Create
Not directly. They are more often than not replaced by brand new AAAAA (or
whatever) efficient products.

Throwaway society stuff is generally dumped on Eastern European outlets (prime
example are used cars, white goods, even clothes etc.).

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cmurf
Repair labor is a huge percent of the repair cost, and includes no warranty,
and hence the incentive to just buy new. If the government is going to
intervene, maybe what they ought to do is a.) reduce the VAT on repairs, b.)
require a 90-180 day whole device warranty, c.) increase the VAT on new
products. a) and b) would approximately cancel each other cost wise to the
consumer, but give them more confidence in the repair process, which a) alone
doesn't do; and c) increases the spread in cost between repair vs new which
was the point of a).

Of course the ideal would be to make it just as easy to disassemble consumer
devices as it is to assemble them. i.e. if the cost of disassembly were equal
to or less the value of physical materials in the product.

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nipunn1313
This is anecdotal for sure, but I've noticed in travels that poorer countries
tend to value repairs and older appliances more. Presumably, this is because
labor is cheaper. Perhaps a more streamlined way to sell (or even donate) old
stuff to poorer countries could combat the wastefulness in a productive way.

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remir
A change in mentality is needed, that's for sure.

I was browsing Kijiji the other day and was shocked to see how many people
sell their perfectly working appliances just because they are tired of how
they look (white) and prefer the newer trend of "stainless steel"...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But ... selling them means somebody else will use them. Its not the same as
throwing them away. Its called 'reuse' which is actually much better than
'recycle'

~~~
remir
Sure, they're not throwing them away. They sell their appliances to buy new
models, but new appliances obviously take resources and energy to build and
transport. Same for cars, TVs, gadgets, etc.

~~~
detaro
And presumably someone is buying the old appliance and uses it, instead of
buying a new one: one appliance more bought new on one side, one less on the
other.

There is of course the factor that through this people can afford appliances
that otherwise wouldn't have them, but that at least has a clear benefit for
them.

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drallison
Providing an incentive to repair through the tax system may have a limited but
positive effect. A better choice would be to mandate long lifetime design and
manufacture with penalties to the manufacturer for early failures.

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bogomipz
Perhaps they could start by talking to Ikea and H&M as part of this
initiative?

These are two of their largest exports, both of which have flooded the global
retail market with cheap and disposable goods.

The fact that both of these companies produce more "stylish" designs of
throwaway goods does not diminish their impact on the environment or lessen
their very sizable contribution to and promotion of disposable culture.

~~~
ptaipale
Practically none of Ikea or H&M stuff is manufactured in Sweden and exported,
though. Sweden is the hub for brand management and such, but the manufacturing
is distributed to where the contractors do it cheapest: China, Russia,
Bangladesh, India, Vietnam.

So the disposable goods are not exported from Sweden, they're imported to
Sweden and other Western nations. And typically a part of the brand management
is quality control that makes this cheap stuff slightly better, quality-wise,
than the generic imports from same countries.

~~~
bogomipz
Both Ikea and H&M are Swedish companies that have exported a brand that is
synonymous with disposable culture, which is the point in the original
article.

Why does it matter that they source their cheap labor and manufacturing from
elsewhere? Furthermore Ikea and H&M are not quality goods.

~~~
ptaipale
Export a brand, but not export the stuff.

H&M is crap in my opinion, but I actually think IKEA makes a lot of quality
stuff.

~~~
bogomipz
What is this distinction between a brand and where the goods are shipped from?
The profit from those sales are booked to a Swedish company.

From a very recent article - July 4th of this year:

'IKEA Group Chief Executive Peter Agnefjall said the push was due to customers
increasingly demanding more durable products.

"Customers expect us to do more (on quality). And nowadays you can't really
make products that are throwaway: when you buy a sofa table it needs to be
built to last," he told Reuters.'

I mean there you have a C-level Ikea officer admitting there's an issue. What
more do you need?

Source: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ikea-quality-
idUSKCN0ZK1IX](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ikea-quality-idUSKCN0ZK1IX)

~~~
ptaipale
A significant distinction is that the manufacturing and exports are not
controlled by Swedish laws, which the OP was about.

------
known
Does it make you happy?

