AuDN4T

Long gone are the days of appliances and equipment lasting years. You have fridges that once lasted very long and needed parts replaced. Now the part replacement is the cost of purchasing a new fridge. Creating a lot of waste and unnecessary energy waste. How can we logically justify all that energy wasted to create a new fridge and time spent working to earn that money to purchase that new fridge when the price of producing that fridge part technically should cost less to produce and wastes less energy?

Even with cameras – I’ve purchased Leica cameras because of the manual option with shutter dials and aperture. My Leica M8 is a 20 year old camera but works fine. It has a nice image film-like rendering. I bought it second hand due to the pricing of these cameras. Spending $5k or $11k is not feasible for me. For a camera that is 20 years, you now have a hard time finding a battery that works for it or has the same battery life the original batteries had. Finding an OEM battery is difficult; you’re not sure if it will good enough or if it will damage the camera further. It’s such a double edge sword.

After a while Leica moved onto the path of switching from camera having the ability to accept OEM batteries to cameras that were limited to Leica only produced batteries. These batteries have a chip in them preventing them from being produced by others. When these batteries are no longer produced, what is the camera owner to do once their batteries have died completely? Is it fair for a manufacturer to force batteries or equipment or parts to be proprietary and prevent the consumer from using their product? Why are we producing more waste in this world?

Even with vehicles – why are car manufacturers now dictating that your vehicle car basics are subscription based? If you spend $40k on a vehicle with a radio, android auto, heated seats – how is it ok to shut off those features after 2 years? You paid for those services in your car. If you didn’t want those, you could have gone for a trim level below. In a world where you think you’re supposed to progress as humans, you expect safety features to be standard. Like seat belts, and turning signals, heated mirrors, etc. Are we going to remove those safety features and expect consumers to pay for them as well? We can look at the case of Boeing – how many of their planes suddenly plummeted downward resulting in crashes, killing many people? What countries were impacted by this? What countries were not impacted? Why were some safety features available but not others? Because it came down to cost? Is this the direction we’re headed?

If companies care about safety, health and environmental sustainability – they would truly buy into these systems. Looking at Leica’s sustainability statement, with how they’ve proceeded with their M-series camera batteries, this does not ring true:

“Leica stands for visual enjoyment and lasting value. Our approach and unique technical expertise make our optical instruments ideal companions, offering the highest possible reliability and durability…”

Seeing those mounds of clothing in Ghana beaches because companies think it’s ok to “donate” this clothing somewhere when they’ve had enough of it is pretty shitty to do.

Organizations need to really commit to sustainability because this is getting way out of hand. How do we hold them accountable?