Plasmas On The Streets Of Japan

Another article, discussing the concept of quality and total product lifecycles and producer responsibility.

Like everything else – like health, like famine relief, like national security – the ethical impulse to minimise our waste must be rendered sensible in business terms before it can be understood to be practical in any other way. The liveliest new thinking in relation to rubbish is therefore about the great financial benefit recycling brings – there are profits to be had, and this is understood to be a motor of change. The concept was essentially invented by the Japanese, by companies such as Toshiba, who invented a system of ‘total quality management’ whereby the manufacturing process would build in the possibility of zero defects. Many Japanese companies are now working on an understanding that their processes will suffer only one defect per million. ‘Transferred to the arena of municipal waste,’ said Stephen Tindale of Greenpeace,

Zero Waste forces attention onto the whole life cycle of products. Zero Waste encompasses producer responsibility, ecodesign, waste reduction, reuse and recycling, all within a single framework. It breaks away from the inflexibility of incinerator-centred systems and offers a new policy framework capable of transforming current linear production and disposal processes into “smart” systems that utilise the resources in municipal waste and generate jobs and wealth for local economies.

Lastly, in Japan, they just leave things out in the streets when they bore of them. A TV, music center, refrigerator and washing machine just put out on the streets. The cost of upgrading electronic goods is not only price but space. There are fees for recycling. Putting the item in the street saves the person a trip and a fee for a recycling sticker. Most goods are in good working order just a bit dated. There are even plasma TVs waiting to be picked up!

What a standard of living we have achieved, when toddlers have their own ipods, and plasmas are left on the street.

Now what?

Thinking About Our Footprint

So I’ve never before felt the same “Chicken Little” emotion around the environment going to pot, but the longer I’ve been on the west coast, the more curious I’m becoming about waste: where it goes, how it’s managed, and how we all contribute to the Great Pile. I recently watched the promo video for The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It’s a little campy, predictably biased but gets the message across without too much brow beating – always a nice benefit.

There was one segment which particularly resonated with me, her chapter on Consumption. It wasn’t a suprise that our nation’s identity is driven through shopping and consuming. However it was a surpise that only 1% of the things we consume is trashed within 6 months – I believe it given that the consignment stores are always packed, . I know that the US definition of quality is far lower than say, Germany’s. We plan for obselence because we like to buy new things – “Keep it bright and shiney and give me the new color please!” They buy for the long haul, their decision on a quality product bringing them contentment that they no longer have to worry about that (dishwasher, camera or car) again.

Shortly after WWII when we were figuring out how to ramp up the economy, a retail analyst articulated one of the most demonic sentences that (I believe) has set this country on a crack habit of consumption that no AA program can solve:

Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.
- Victor Lebow, 1955

There is something so niave, short-term and small-minded about this statement. Is it because we are such a young country that we followed such advice so literally? There are several sites, all ending in dead ends saying Viktor is speaking critically and giving warning and some said Lebow was an environmentalist.

Resources:
Why Consumption Matters
Prior article from Viktor Lebow and a pretty comprehensive post on this topic…