At last we need to fix the waste problem

This week’s Mediahuis Irish regional newspapers’ column

Michael Commane

My late parents were ahead of the curve on this one, indeed I can imagine so too were most of our late parents.

Last month the European Parliament voted on a stronger ‘right to repair’ for consumers. The plan or hope is that across the European Union people will find it possible to repair broken or damaged goods.

The vote was overwhelmingly in favour: 590 voted yes, 15 against and 15 abstentions.

 

Planned obsolescence has become the status quo. It’s fashionable to throw out rather than repair.

When we were first made aware of planned obsolescence we were annoyed with the manufacturers, we felt the wool was being pulled over our eyes and we were being forced to throw something out when it stopped working. 

Now it’s part of our vocabulary. Today it’s what we automatically do without asking ourselves why can’t it be fixed.

Only last week I was at a recycling depot and saw a cage filled to the brim with electrical equipment. 

Indeed, I have on occasion, with permission from the staff member on duty, taken an item out of it, brought it home and fixed it. In some cases it meant replacing a one amp fuse in a plug.

 

What has got us to this stage in our so-called development?

Anyone who reads this column knows that I cycle. Up until about 10/15 years ago I took it as normal to fix a puncture. I admit to having got lazy and I now leave the bicycle in to a shop for the job to be done. 

To my knowledge there is not a bicycle shop in the land that repairs punctures. Instead, they whip out the tube, bin it, and replace it with a new one. Just think of the rubber that is wasted in that exercise.

There’s a suggestion for an entrepreneur, set up a small business fixing bicycle punctures. The money and material that would be saved. It’s about time we stopped saying: ‘It’s not worth it’. It is.

I remember my father on occasion fixing our shoes using a last, which is a metal object, shaped like a human foot. It was, maybe still is,  used by cobblers to repair shoes. Does anyone ever leave shoes in to be ‘soled and heeled’ today? I doubt it.

Over the last number of weeks I found myself using a washing machine that is 35 years old. The washing tabs said best before 2010. I’m no professional on clothes and fabrics but all the items I washed in that machine with those tabs came out clean and fresh.

The next time something breaks down on you why not visit YouTube and there is every possibility it will come to the rescue and direct you how to get the machine working again.

The new European draft legislation would mean saving four million tonnes of greenhouse gases every year, which is the equivalent to removing two million cars off our roads.

Older people will remember their mothers darning socks and their fathers putting shoes on lasts.

 

It might be going a little too far and certainly politically incorrect to revert to that arrangement. But we darn  need to cop on and make things last.