A welcome mandate, especially for electronics. However people are already throwing away so much perfectly fine furniture that I don‘t think it will help much in that regard. A lot of people want something new, not something that just works.
Where are you living? Here people give away (emmaus for example) or sell it online, for cheap equals you don’t even need to throw it away, someone comes and picks it up for you.
Those appliances are so simple too, making them durable is very low cost. Good move EU.
Yeah they buy new because the advertisements give you idea that new is cool, brainwashing one into consuming. We should ban ads
Well, for furniture, I totally agree with you and honestly: I don’t think there is eomething wrong with redesigning your living room every 10 years, especially when you move around.
I mainly want to be able to buy old washing machines, dish washers, TVs, because I don’t care about their appearance.
If it’s quality furniture you can sell or donate it. If it’s recent Ikea or other cheap stuff, it won’t survive being disassembled, moved and reassembled. Ikea’s surfaces scratch so easily, even on desks. It’s ridiculous. That kind of fast furniture is terribly unsustainable. But I wouldn’t be bothered if you bought a new sofa every ten years and make someone else happy with a used sofa that will last another ten years in it’s new home.
And work without apps.
You can buy LED lightbulbs that all have their own apps. It’s getting ridiculous
Just use home assistant, you don’t need their hubs/apps (assuming they use a standard like Zigbee or zwave). For wifi try tasmota.
They should just force them to open the API, this would be sufficient in most cases.
Imagine, government of the people, by the people, and for the people - that’s crazy SoCiAlIsM talk!
Longer means more forever chemicals
Right, so if they break down faster the forever chemicals disappear faster. Is that what you mean?
Do you even know what forever chemicals are or do you think they’re a magic thing that are added to machines to make them last longer?
Companies literally add pfas to everything to make things last longer
Ahhh, so you are the type of dumb that heard the name and assumed the wrong interpretation and ran with it. The so-called “forever chemicals” are called that because they themselves don’t really break down, but they don’t give that property to other things. These “forever chemicals” are stuff like teflon, they’re stuff that doesn’t react with other things and that makes them nonstick, something that can be useful in a bunch of different things besides just nonstick pans, but because they’re so nonstick, it’s difficult to make them stay in the pan or whatever industrial machine they’re a part of, so they can flake off and be in the end product, in our food, water, soil and much more, and since like I said before they’re not reactive, they can just stay there as their molecules, forever. Using them in a machine doesn’t give the machine more durability or extends it’s work life, it just helps it not stick to stuff
I’d love to hear how you came to that conclusion.
Not really, it means mechanically working longer not forever.
Now, this is the trading standards that we all ask for; not “be more racist” or repeal the protection on lgbt. Christ, American fascism is the weirdest i have seen. Fascism in the past didn’t even try to dictate the laws and regulations of other countries.
Hell yeah. This is the good shit.
Electronics in general should last longer, just like back in the day.
Plenty of short-lived stuff back then, too. Survivorship bias means that all the stuff that happened to survive to today is not necessarily representative of the typical thing that was manufactured back then.
Do like Dubai (for this instance) and demand better LED bulbs too.
If you read into it, the video is misleading and the bulbs aren’t as good as it claims. They don’t go out but they suck when it comes to the light they produce
That’s too bad, I haven’t kept up with the news I. That I guess. The main problem I saw was that specifically Dubai preferred cold white light, while that should have nothing to do with longevity, the only place I can tolerate that is in my workshop, where I already have LED florescent replacements.
This drives me nuts. I only buy Philips LEDs now since the others only seem to last a year, which is infuriating.
I only use IKEA, and they last forever for me.
That’s weird. I tried IKEA first and they died super quick too. Only thing that makes sense to me is they are somehow overheating which doesn’t make sense since they weren’t fully enclosed and room temp is normal.
Maybe I’ve give them ago again, it was 5+ years ago I tried them.
My first Led for a regular lamp at home was an Osram for nearly 20€. It died after ca. 3 years. After that Ikea had launched their cheap LEDs and I started buying them. I can’t really say how long each of them lasted, but I moved and started reusing them in different lamps. I guess most of them are over 5 years old by now. Every now and then one of them dies but my subjective feelings is that they offer great value.
I’ve been running Tradfri lamps from IKEA for over 5 years now with little issue. But I have them always somewhat dimmed. Not sure if that would make a difference.
Dude I love Big Clive.
The spirit is willing, but the machine is spongy and bruised.
Bullshit. My aunt has a washing machine with all knobs and switches that’s probably 30+ years old and it still works fine.
They need to stop putting all these digital components into washing machines or make the boards standardized so they can be easily swapped out. These aren’t laptops that you toss after 3-5 years. Appliances should last 10-20 years.
It’s a good thing they think about this. With that said, the tires can wait. Let’s start with the low hanging fruit. It’s a crime that critical components in home appliances break so easily and are so hard to fix.
Or impossible to buy spares for, or when you can get the spare part it’s often so expensive with shipping that it’s almost worth buying a new appliance on offer with the warranty that comes with it.
Exactly this. I recently had my clothes washer break. Spent days researching the problem, taking the thing apart, figuring out the cause was the spindle on the back of the drum having a crack and eventually breaking. I eventually found a replacement part which had a slightly different part number but research showed it should be compatible. $400 for the part. $130 shipping, plus tax came out to just shy of $600. 2 week lead time to get the part, and no certainty I’d be able to put it all back together. Professional appliance repair wouldn’t have made financial sense either, I called around.
I ended up ordering a new one for $800 all in, saving many headaches. Had it two days later and was able to catch up on laundry.
Did you research spare part availability / reparability scores when buying the new one?
I always start with that when buying major items. Some brands are more consumer friendly than others. I was still able to buy replacement parts for my 2005 fridge and dishwasher in 2019 and 2023 for 13 and 100 euros respectively (the 100 euro was a heat exchanger one of the biggest pieces of the machine). With 6 Euro shipping costs, 2 day delivery. And a bunch of YouTube videos to do the repair.
In 2024 we equipped a whole new house with the same brand, voting with our wallets.
Yes, to the best of my ability and available resources. It is a newer model, so currently spare parts seemed to be abundant vs the 12 or so year old previous model.
Nice work on the cheap repairs! Which brand, if I may ask?
Neff, but it’s exactly the same hardware as Bosch and Siemens (BSH).
We sold the apartment with the 20 year old devices still working perfectly.
Cool! Bosch is going to be my next set of appliances after I sell my current place, and my new place needs new ones.
Fundamentally, you’re never going to be able to compete with the economies of scale of an assembly line with the same people putting together all the parts that were shipped to the same place. If the repairman has to keep an inventory of hundreds of parts for dozens of models, and drive around to where he only has time to diagnose and fix 2 appliances per day, while the factory worker can install a part for 100 appliances per day, there will always be a gap between the price of replacement versus the price of repair.
Tiny plastic part that holds the handle to my fridge broke. Need a new 50 cent plastic part.
GE wants $200 to replace all 3 metal handle assemblies. Can’t just get the plastic part, it comes in a bundle with all 3 metal handles. Which would immediately go in the garbage.
If we can’t get them on the “intentionally gouging customers” angle, we can surely get them on the “creating excess waste” angle.
Find someone with a 3D printer?
Some stuff are just ridiculously tedious to service due to their design.
Asus laptops are notorious for this. I remember having to take apart everything including the mainboard just to replace the RAM module.
On a similar note, in car context, I’ve read about instances where one needed to take out the whole engine just to replace the spark plug. I think it was Mercedes A series, as well as some Wuling.
Samsung: god damnit, now we have to use the $0.30 washer instead of the $0.29 washer and itll last at least 10 years longer!
That’s 10s of millions in extra sales lost!
Well this mandate all but guarantees no trade deal will be made with the US. The things we do make don’t last long.
The things we do make don’t last long.
I assume you’re from the states? I’ve had my small Made in USA Thermos for 10 years. It’s indestructible.
I could probably think of a few other good and durable things coming from the US - all sorts of guitars, banjos, ukuleles?
I’m being hyperbolic. Ultimately is buying US worth your soul, values/morals, and pride? In the end it’s not worth it.
As much as I love this, I fail to see how this would be able to be written into law. It’s basically gov mandated warranty period. If the goal is to have manufacturers make products that last, how long is long enough for every product category? What’s to say that they do the same thing and design products that fail right after warranty ends? Who decides if there is foul play in designing faulty products and how? Unless the gov makes their own product that lasts for 20 years and tells every other company to use this as a baseline otherwise get fined, I don’t know how they would be able to enforce this.
I just think this is a big gray area and it would be hard to make this cut and clear. The only thing I think they could do for now is to have companies provide repair manuals and provide parts for a set amount of years after product launch, and repairs should be able to be made by customers themselves without needing to go through 1st party verification like Apple requires with their phones.
That feels like a move on the slippery slope from a market economy to a planning economy.
The objective is honorable, but better value should come from customer choices, not from regulations.
Instead of making those rules and establishing institutions that enforce them, the EU should create infrastructure that allows consumers to compare products objectively. Add the opportunity to finance more expensive but also more durable products easily and there is no need to suffocate everything in regulations.
I should add that this recreates the limited housing markets for consumer goods. This is going to make life more expensive despite each rule being very reasonable. The promise of the EU were free markets, but the opposite is happening.
Ah, the dream of a libertarian paradise.
The promise of the EU were free markets
Free as in fewer hurdles between nations, not as in “the market will take care of everything”.
but the opposite is happening.
Yeah, no. The EU has always strived for a balance there. You bringing up the spectre of “planning economy” is just fearmongering.
You wouldn’t happen to work at the Internet Research Agency?
Well you either have a plan to help people or the plan automatically devolves to “extract as much rent as possible from the people”.
Yes, and that’s why competition is needed so that the ‘as much rent as possible’ is minimized. I am not arguing against a helpful society. We don’t exchange goods for compassion but for money so we need competition.
We don’t exchange goods for compassion
We actually do that all the time. Altruism takes many forms. Or if you wanna be a nerd you can call it Mutual Aid.
Edit: sorry I’ll stop pecking at you, it also took me a long time to deprogram from “Keynesian/Chicago economics is 100% right about human behavior.”
I wouldn’t mind switching to a society that is built on altruism. My point is that the EU is not an inherent benevolent government. These regulations will be abused and I believe that there would be less abuse if we spent the resources on infrastructure that allows the consumers to make better decisions.
Why can’t you have both? Create the best value for customers, but you have to adhere to these regulations.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable position to me.
Regulatory capture. It already exists in the housing market, medical equipment, medical drugs, etc. There, things are more expensive than necessary.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
The shift in responsibility to the EU is not free. Of course, it costs some taxes to run the institutions that enforce the regulations. But who is supervising those institutions? That would be up to the citizens, instead of comparing products directly.
Are citizens going to do that? Have citizens checked the sourcing of the covid vaccines?