Today, I learned that on of my favourite NGO’s will start a campaign against ‘throw-away’ manufacturing of goods. More and more goods are produced in a way which makes it impossible to repair them when even the tinyest component gives out; you can’t even open them anymore – the casing is held together by glue rather then screws. And if you can open them, the components turn out to be soldered in place and you can’t get replacement components anyway.

Consumers are thus forced to buy a whole new device or machine, even when a more eco-friendly design would have made repairing a cinch. The (Dutch) NGO campaign demands legislation to curb such wasteful designs.

I feel elated that, finally, someone stands up and says “We can’t go on like this; this is shear nonsense. We all agree, the public, the politicians and the businessmen, that we should work toward a more sustainable way of producing our goods. Our representatives voted, in our name, for committments to that effect. But at the same time we would allow this trend toward more-and-more ‘throw-away’ devices to go on? Come on! We’ve got to do something about that!”

I wholeheartedly agree and will support this campaign where I can.

Yet, I’m a bit sad too. For I’m a bit weary of waiting for political solution and legislation. For starters: it will take many, many years to get this legislation accepted. And it will never make a chance to be accepted if ‘the public’ doesn’t ask for it and so far only few of them do. In some areas, like mobile phones and tablets, the trend seems to go rather the opposite way. But let’s not be pessimistic: phones are one thing, but washing machines, coffee makers and electric drills are quite another; I think that we would like these to last, as we would like most of what we buy to last.

So, the alternative to legislation is simple: we buy, preferably, goods that are well made and last for a liong time. Goods from manufacturers who produce and keep a stock of replacement parts. There’s just one thing wrong with this simple idea: how do we know what devices to buy? As durability is clearly in the interest of consumers, one would expect consumer organisations to provide this kind of information and make it count heavily in the comparison charts. That is where I am mightily disappointed. Only now and then any attention is given to this aspect and even in those rare cases where goods are tested for sturdiness, usually no attention at all is paid to the availability of replacement parts of the ease with which a device can be repaired. Which, of course, detemines the cost of the repair.

So, yes let’s support this campaign to get some long overdue legislation in place. But also: let’s write letters to our consumer organisation, again and again pointing out where they have, once more, failed to take ‘durability’ into account.