[baroffoos]

I'm happy to listen to alternative solutions on how the environment can be protected from needless product waste. And no, recycling doesn't come close to reuse/repairs.

>Not every consumer wants or cares about this

What consumers want or care about is less important than the ability to live on the planet in 100 years.

[dwg]

My argument was from the standpoint of consumer protection. If environmental protection is your goal, then I would point out a few issues.

Newer products are often more efficient. It's not clear to me that supporting older products is always better for the environment. For example, newer tractors may be orders of magnitude more efficient in fuel consumption and pollution control. I don't know this for a fact but I think there is sufficient precedent to make this assumption for at least some products. Many consumers will favor short-term gains (not having to pay the cost of a new tractor) over long-term solutions (upgrading and recycling equipment).

Leaving aside products that fit into the above category, lets look at an example of a product commonly discarded before it's usable life. Laptops, for example.

Here again it's not clear to me that legislating requirements for spare parts and security updates would make much difference. After 5 years or so all the laptops of average users that I've encountered are in terrible shape. Tons of spyware, extremely slow, and almost unusable. In this case I would usually just erase and reinstall. Now add a broken part to the list. Especially on cheap laptops, components are increasingly integrated so a single broken part could mean replacing essentially 50% of the machine. Laptops are so cheap. What do you think the consumer will chose: pay for the repair and cleanup of an essentially useless machine, or just buy a new one? So often it's the later.

The closed ecosystems that have sprung up thanks to the App Store have actually improved this, but still, in my experience, people tend to just buy something newer (and better) rather than deal with (and wait for) a repair.

I'm not claiming there would be no impact in legislating around this, but I believe it would be small, riddled with holes and problems, and that there are better approaches (to solving environment problems).

Just a wacky example but consider the following.

Manufactures typically design for a particular lifespan (such that no more than a certain % of devices would fail within a specified number of years). The idea is to reduce the amount of devices being trashed, so perhaps we could create tax incentives to encourage (a) longer life spans and (b) better recyclabiltiy.