Does Global Recession = Consumption Recession?

I hope so.
No really its an interesting question, which would deserve several PhD studies of its own. If the global recession hits peoples spending power by the amount that it has in the last few months in the UK. Could it bring about a sustained or a least temporary drop in consumption.

Could and would people stop just replacing products because there is a new one available that has newer features? Would people once again treasure their old CRT TV’s and stop replacing them with the environmentally destructive LCD types (see earlier post energy efficiency or governmental deficiency) that don't last anywhere near as long. Would municipal recycling centres see a decline in the amount of products (many still working) being thrown away each week. Could we ever become a society again that sees benefits in repairing products rather than disposing of them. Or cherishing products that last a long time and caring for them in order to further extend their life, rather than despairing at an older product because it is now the wrong colour or does match a new appliance.

Could we return even partially to the consumer attitudes pre 1960's plastics mass production boom, before the days of built in obsolescence and the disposable society. A society that invests in products expecting them to last half a life time like my old iron.

I really do think that in order to significantly reduce the environmental impact that we are creating we really need to go backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps this recession is the opportunity we all need to significantly change our attitudes. Perhaps even during this down turn a product service sector may become a stronger possibility with consumers renting rather than buying appliances to allow for them to be returned to the OEM at the end of life for remanufacturing, well we can only hope

Yes this may appear insensitive with the current rate of redundancies being announced each day in the UK. But if we could go back to a time of repairing and maintaining products or offer product service sectors this will create a lot more jobs in each home country rather than the far east.

However I doubt it is even on the governments consideration list as they hand the greedy and incompetent banks more of ours the tax payers money today whilst the interest rates have again been lowered punishing those who were careful enough to save rather than contributing to this over consumption disaster in the first place. I probably should stop ranting about the government though soon as I've decided when I finish my PhD I'm going to do something about this mess and apply for a civil service position hopefully in the strategy board to influence government policy. But we will see...

Don’t buy Plastic products

Well I’m becoming even more concerned at the state of ecological thinking. As I previously wrote in Paradoxes in Sustainable Product Design Life Cycle Analysis LCA would prefer a plastic kettle over a Stainless steel kettle despite the disadvantages of plastics that I listed.

However after a little more reading I realise that it isn’t just the difficulty in keeping the plastic uncontaminated with other types of plastic in recycling that is the issue this is rather a guise. The real issue is the chemical makeup or plastic which is not really suitable for continued reuse the chemical bonds break down so that even if the plastics is separated meticulously into the different types, the resulting recycled plastic is likely to not be as mechanically strong it will lose some of its properties in reprocessing. Coupled to this the effect that UV light has on plastics and you will start to realise that a 10 year old television’s plastic casing is no longer very desirable except in a down cycling stage where it may be used to make a kerb stone or turned into a recycling bin.

You may ask what the problem with down cycling is, well its that this plastic should be reused in another T.V. otherwise the new T.V. needs to have more oil extracted from the ground and processed into new virgin plastic. Oil that we are running very short of and extraction and processing of which adds to the environmental problems.

Plastics are in terms of materials fairly new the plastics revolution erupted in the 1960’s with cheaper disposable goods feeding the affluent baby booming generations that prospered after the struggles of their parents throughout the 1940 and 1950’s due to second world war rationing. Plastics enable new organic shapes to be produced in bright vibrant colours, products were cheaper and fashions started to change more frequently. The advent of mass produced plastics mean that more people could move with the times and follow the design movements of the day unlike post war styles such as Art Nouveau and Deco which were restricted to the upper classes.

The problem is that cheaper products mean that people consume more, cheaper products mean that more of them can be bought, more plastic consumed. Product life spans have tumbled, my grandmother owned an electric iron from the early 1960’s it was given to my mother when ours broke and used right up until the mid 1990’s in fact it still works today except the technology has improved so it is no longer used. But modern irons last between 3 and 5 years from my experience, the technology isn’t the reason for this monumental drop in life expectancy, they aren’t made to last any longer. It’s down to cost people want cheap products and don’t get them repaired it is cheaper on the pocket to buy a new one. But not on the environment…..