This is Marcos from Barcelona,
but he could be anyone... anywhere.
What is about to happen to him,
occures daily in offices and homes all over the world.
A part inside the printer has failed.
And the fanufactures sends Marcos to technical support.
A technician can make a diagnosis
but it costs 15 euros plus VAT.
It has become difficult to find parts for this.
It's not worth repairing.
Repair will cost 110-120 euros.
Printers cost as low as 39 euros.
I would advise you buy a new printer.
It's best to buy a new one.
It's no coincidence that all three shop keepers suggest buying a new printer.
If he agrees, Marcos will become yet another victim
of the planned obsolescence,
the secret mechanism at the heart of our consumer's society.
...
....
We live in a society ruled by economic growth.
We not only grow to meet demand,
but grow for the sake of growth.
...
This film will reveal how planned obsolescence
has defined our lifes ever since the 1920s,
when fanufacturers started shortening lifes of products
to increase the consumer's demand.
They decided to shorten the lifespan to 1000 hours.
We will find out how designers and engineers
were made to adopt new values and objectives.
...
A new generation of consumers
has started challenging the manufacturers.
Is it possible to imagine
a viable economy without planned obsolescence?
Without its impact on the environment?
The posteriority will never forget us.
....
...
Wellcome to Livermore, Colifornia,
home of the longest burning light bulb.
I am Lynn Owens,
and I am chairman of the lightbulb committee.
In 1972, we discovered
that the lightbulb that was hanging in the fire station
was a significant light bulb.
The light bulb over the Livermore fire station
has been burning continously since 1901.
Ironically,
the bulb is already outlasted two webcams.
In 2001, when the bulb was 100 years old,
the people of Livermore threw up a big birthday party.
American style.
We were hoping to get 200 people
but finally, we ended up with 800 or 900 people showing up..
You can imagine to sing a birthday song to a light bulb?
We didn't think they would. But they did.
The origin of the bulb,
it was produced in a town called Shelby, Ohio,
back around 1895.
They were put together by some very interesting ladies
and some gentlemen of the company.
The filament was invented by Adolphe Chaillet.
He invented his filament to last.
Why does this filament last? I don't know.
It's a secret that died with him.
Chaillet's formula for a long lasting filament
is not the only mistery in the history of light bulbs.
A much bigger secret is
how the light bulb became
the first victim of planned obsolescence.
Christmas Eve 1924 was a special day.
In a backroom at Geneve
suit wearing men met to create a secret plan.
They established the first worldwide cartel.
Their goal was to control the production of lightbulbs
and to divide the world market between them.
The cartel was called Phoebus.
Phoebos included the main lightbulb manufacturers in Europe and USA,
and even far away colonies like in Asia and Africa.
They would change the patents, control the production -
- and above all control consumption.
It is better for the companies that bulbs must be changed more often.
Lasting lights are an economic disadvantage.
Initially, manufacturers striked for a long life span of their bulbs.
On October twenty-first 1871,
numerous experiments resulted
in the production of a small unit lamp of comparatively enormous resistance.
The filament being under conditions of great stability after this result...
Tomas Edison's first commercial bulb on sell by 1881...
lasted 1500 hours.
By 1924, when the Phoebus cartel was founded,
manufacturers proudly advertised life spans up to 2500 hours
and stressed the longevity of their bulbs.
The members of Phoebus thought:
"Let's limit the lifespan of a light bulb to 1000 hours."
In 1925 they appointed a group called
"The 1000 Hour Life Committee",
- that would technically reduce the time an incandescent lamp could burn.
80 years later,
Helmut Höge, an historiant from Berlin,
uncoveres proves of the committee's activities
hidden in the internal documents of the founding members of the cartel:
such as Phillips in Holland,
Osram in Germany,
and Compagnie des Lampes in France.
Here we have a cartel document:
"The average life of lamps for General Lighting Service", -
"must not be guatanteed, published or offered", -
"for another value than 1000 hours."
Under pressure from the cartel,
the member companies conducted experiments to create a more fragil lightbulb,
that would conform with the new 1000 hours norm.
All production was managered rigorously
to make sure cartel members cumplied.
One measure was to set up
a stand with many shelves -
- to which different types of lightbulbs were connected to -
So the Company Osram was abled to register
how long they lasted.
Phoebus enforced its rules through an elaborated burocracy:
Members were fined heavily if their monthly life reports were off the mark.
Here we have a list of fines from 1929.
It shows how many Swiss francs companies had to pay -
- for example, here when the life of a bulb was about 1500 hours.
As planned obsolescence took effect,
lifespans fell steadily.
in just 2 years, they dropped from 2500 hours...
to less than 1500 hours.
By the 1940s, the cartel had reached its goal.
1000 hours had become the standard lifespan for bulbs.
I can see how this was very atempting in 1932.
....
...
Officially, Phoebus never existed,
although it's tracks have always been there.
The strategy has been to constantly change names.
They used the name "The International Energy Cartel" and others.
The point is that this idea as an institution still exists.
In Barcelona,
Marcos hasn't followed the advise of the shopkeepers to replace his printer.
He is determined to repair it,
and he has found somebody on the internet
who discovered what actually happened to his printer.
The dirty little secret of the inkjet printers.
I tried to print a document and it said "parts of the printer requiere replacement".
So I decided to do a little servicing of my own.
Hello, Marcos, I received your message.
Marcos has contacted the author of the video.
I looked into the printer and there was a sponge
:::
....
and it won't function anymore.
Their justification is they don't wanna dirty your desk with ink.
But I think the problem goes deeper than that.
It's the way technology works: it is just designed to fail.
Planned obsolescence merged at the same time
as the mass production and the consumers society.
The whole issue with products being made to last less long
is part of a whole pattern that began in the Industrial Revolution
when the new machines were producing goods so much more cheaply
which was a great thing for consumers.
But consumers couldn't keep up with the machines.
There was so much production.
As early as 1928, an influential advertising magazine warned:
" an article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business."
In fact, mass production made many goods
widely available, the prices dropped
and many people started shopping for fun
rather than for need.
The economy was booming.
In 1929, the emergent consumer society came to a full stop,
when the Wall Street crashes the USA into a deep economic ressetion.
...
In 1933, the 25% was unemployed.
People no longer queued for goods,
but for work and for food.
From New York came a radical proposal on how to kick start the economy again.
Bernard London, a prominent broker,
suggested ending the depression
by making planned obsolescence composery by law.
It was the first time the concept was put into writing.
Under Bernard London's proposal, all products was given a leace of life
set with a expiry date,
after which they would considered legally dead.
Consumers would turn them over to a government agency
where they would be destroyed.
He was trying to achieve a balance between capital and labor
where there would be always a market for new goods.
So there would be always need for labor,
and there would always be a reward for capital.
Bernard London believed that with compostery planned obsolescence
the wheels of industry would keep turning,
people would keep consuming
and everyone would have a job.
Giles Slade has come to New York to investigate the person behind the idea.
He wants to find out if for Bernard London
the planned obsolescence was purely about profits
or about helping the unemployed.
Dorothea Weitzner remembers meeting Bernard London in the 30s
during a family outing.
Don't tell me which one he is..
Isn't that interesting!
Definitely intellectual looking...
-You met Bernard London in 1933...
-When I was 16 or 17 years old...
my Dad had a big Cadillac car,
which was the size of a Zepellin.
Mother was driving, and Dad in the front,
and the Londons were sitting in the back.
Dad said that Mr. London should explain his philosophy to me.
He was an interesting man and he just told me in a few words
that this was his idea to reduce the depression.
We were an economic mess, worth than today even.
He was obsessed with this idea,
like an artist is obsessed with his paintings.
He actually whispered to me,
that he was afraid that his theory was maybe to radical.
In fact, Bernard London's proposal was ignored
and obsolescence by legal obligation was never put into practice.
20 years later, in the 1950s,
the idea resurfaced,
but with a crucial twist:
instead of forcing planned obsolescence on the consumers
they would be seduced by it.
Planned Obsolescence:
the desire on the part of the consumer
to own something
a little newer, a little better,
a little sooner than is necessary.
This is the voice of Brook Stevens,
the apostol of planned obsolescence in postwar America.
This industrial designer
created everything from household appliances to cars and trains
always with planned obsolescence in mind.
In spirit with the times,
Brook Stevens' designs convades speed and modernity.
Even the house, he lived in, was inusual.
This is the house my father designed and I grew up in.
When it was being build,
everyone thought it would be the new bus station
because it was not looking like a traditional home.
The most important for my father was
when designing a product was
He detested bland productos,
that didn't create any desire within the consumer
to inspire the purchase.
Unlike the European approach in the past,
where they tryed to make the very best product and make it last forever
....
The approach in America is one
of making the American consumer unhappy
with the product that he has enjoyed,
having passed it on to the second hand market
and obtain the newest product with the newest possible look.
Brook Stevens travelled all over the US
to promote planned obsolescence in speech after speech.
His approach became the gospel of the time.
...
....
...
Design and marketing
seduced consumers into always desiring the latest model.
My father never designed a product
to intentionally fail
or become obsolete for some functional reason in a short periode of time.
Planned obsolescence is absolutely on the consumer's discretion.
Nobody is forcing the consumer to go into the store and purchase a product.
They go in under their own free will,
It's their choice.
Freedom and happiness through unlimited consumption:
the American way of life in the 1950s
became the foundation of the consumers society as we know it today.
Without planned obsolescence
these places wouldn't exist.
There wouldn't be any products, there wouln't be any industry,
there wouldn't be any designers, any architects,
there wouldn't be any servants, cleaners
there wouldn't be any security guards,
all the jobs would go.
So, how often you change your mobiles?
-Every 18 month. - Once a year.
These days, planned obsolescence
is an integral part of the curricula of design and engineering schools.
Boris Knuv lections on the concept of product's life circle:
a modern eufemism for "planned obsolescence".
I went shopping for you.
I bought a couple of things:
a pan,
salt, a shirt, another shirt...
Students are taught
how to design for a business world
dominated by one single goal:
frequent repeated purchase.
I pass this around and you tell me
how long it takes untill they fail.
Designers have to understand what company they work for.
The company decides on a business model
how often they want to renew their products.
This information is given to designers
...
Planned obsolescence
is at the root of the substantial economic growth
that the Western world is experienced since the 1950s.
Ever since,
growth is the holy grale of our economy.
Growth Society's logic is not only
to grow to meet demand -
- but to grow for the sake of growth; unbounded growth in production -
- that is justified through the boundless growth in consumption.
The three crucial factors are advertising, planned obsolescence and credit.
Serge Latouche is a noted critic of the growth society
and has written extensively about its mechanisms.
The three crucial factors are:
advertising, planned obsolescence and credit.
Since the last generation,
our role in life seems to be just to consume things with credits
to borrow money to buy things we don't need.
That makes no real sense to me at all.
Critics of the growth society
point out that it's unsustainable on a long run
because it's based on a flagrant contadiction.
Anyone who thinks that infinite growth is consistent with a finite planet -
- is either crazy, or an economist.
The problem is that now we've all become economists.
Why a product is produced every 3 minutes?
Is this necessary?
Many people has realized that there was a need to change
when they were told by politicians to go shopping
as the best way to restart the economy.
With this Growth Society
we are sitting in a racing car
-- that no longer has a driver, running at full speed --
and that will end up
crashing into a wall or run off a cliff.
Looking at the service manuals of different printers,
Marcos realizes that the lifespan of many printers
is set up by the engineers right from the start.
They achieve this by placing a chip deep inside the printer.
I have found the chip called EEPROM,
which stores the number of prints.
And when the user reaches a preset number of prints,
the printer locks up.
How do engineers feel
about designing products to fail?
The dilema is captiured in a British film from 1951,
where a young chemist invents an everlasting thread.
He believes that great progress had been made.
But not everyone is happy with his discovery.
And soon he finds himself on the run- not only from the factory owners,
but also from the workers, all fearing for their jobs.
Well, that's really interesting, it reminds me of something
that actually really happened in the textil industry.
In 1940, the chemical giant DuPont
anounced the arrival of a revolutionary synthetic fiber:
nylon!
Girls celebrated the new longlasting stockings.
But the joy was short lived.
My father worked for Dupont
before and after the war, in the nylon division
and he told me a story when nylon first came out
and they were trying it out for stockings
the men of his division were asked to take these stockings home
for their wifes and girlfriends to try out.
My father brought them home to my mother,
and she was delited with the first products because they were so sturdy.
The Dupont chemists had every reason to be proud of their achievement,
as even the men towded the strength of the nylon stockings.
The problem was, they lasted too long,
the women were very happy with the fact that they didn't get runners in them,
unfortunately this meant that the companies producing the stockings
were not going to sell very many.
Dupont gave new instructions to Nicole Fox's father and his colegues.
The men in his division had to go back to the drawing board
to try to make the fibers weaker,
and come out with something that was more fragil and would run,
and so that the stockings wouldn't last as long.
The same chemists who applied their skills to make durable nylons,
went with the spirit of the times and made them more fragile.
This everylasting thread disappeared from the factories,
just like in the cinema.
We need control of this discovery.
If you want the twice the ammount of the contract, we will pay it.
a cuarter of a million...
...
What did the Dupont chemists feel
about reducing the life of the products?
Must have been frustating for the engineers
to have to use their skills to make an inferior product,
after they tried so hard to make a good product.
But I suppose that is the outsider's view.
Probably they just had a job to do.
Make it strong, make it weak- that was their job.
For engineers, it was a complicated ethical time.
This confrontation with planned obsolescence
provoked them to examine their most basic ethical concepts.
There was an old school of engineers that believed
that they should make prominent usable products that will never break.
And there was a new school of engineers that were driven by the market,
they were clearly interested in
making the most disposable products that they could.
This debate resolved itself
by the new school of engineers taking over.
Planned obsolescence did not only afect engineers,
the frustation of ordinary consumers
is reflected in Arthur Miller's classic play
"Death of a Salesman".
Just like Willie Lomax,
all what consumers could do was complain powerlessly.
...
....
...
Little consumers know that on the other side of the Iron Curtine-
in the countries of the Eastern block-
there was a whole economy without planned obsolescence.
The communist economy wasn't ruled by the free market,
but centrally planned by the state.
It was inefficient and plagued by a chronic shortage of resources.
In such a system,
planned obsolescence did not make any sense.
In former east Germany,
the most efficient communist economy,
official regulations estipulated that fridges and washing machines
should work for 25 years.
I bought this DDR-fridge in 1985.
It is 24 years old.
The light bulb is the same age, I have never changed it.
It is 25 years old.
In 1981, a lighting factory in East Germany
launched a long life bulb.
They took it to an international ligthting fair
looking for buyers from the West.
When the East Germans in 1981
presented the bulb
at a fair in Hanover, -
- colleagues in the West said: "You will make yourselves unemployed."
East Germans engineers replied:
"On the contrary." -
- "By saving resources and not wasting tungsten" -
- "we will keep our jobs."
The Western buyers rejected the bulb.
In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.
The factory was closed
and the Eastern German longlife bulb went to out of production.
Now, it only can be found in exhibitions and museums.
20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
consumerism is as rampened in the West as in the East.
But there is one difference: in the age of the internet,
the consumers are ready to fight against planned obsolescence.
The first me made that really broke through
was a movie about the iPod.
I was completely broke when I bought this iPod
which costs about 400 or 500 dollars.
About 8 months later- or 12- the battery died.
I called Apple to replace the battery
and their policy at the time
was to tell their consumers to buy a new iPod.
- Better buy a new one.
- Aplle doesn't offer... -No.
- Apple doesn't offer a new battery? -No.
I wasn't that the battery died that was annoying..
in my Nokia cell phone,
the battery dies and I buy a new one.
Even in my Apple laptop when the battery would die
you would replace the battery.
But in the iPod, this expensive piece of hardware,
when the battery died, you had to replace the entiry unit.
My brother had the idea to make a movie just about that.
We went around with a stencil
spray painting over advertising of iPod.
"iPod's unreplaceable battery lasts only 18 months."
We put the video in our own site, www. ipodsdirtysecret. com.
In the first month,
there were 6 million views
and the site went absolutely bananas.
A lawyer in San Francisco, Elizabeth Pritzkar,
heard about the video,
and together with her associated decided to sew Apple over the lifespan of the iPod.
Half century after the lightbulb case,
planned obsolescence was in court again.
When we brought this litigation,
about 2 years after the iPod was introduced,
Apple had sold about 3 million iPods, nationwide in the US.
Many of the 3 million iPod owners had having battery problems,
and were willing to sew.
One of them was Andrew Westley.
We selected from among the consumers who had called us
individuals who would serve as representants in a class action.
A class action
is a particular mechanism of the USA.
where a small group of persons stand for a large group
to bring a claim before a court.
My role in that case was to represent 1000 of people,
maybe tens of thousands of people.
The case became to be known as "Westley vs. Apple".
When my friends learned that this was a major case
they thought I was becoming a radical.
....
In December 2003,
Elizabeth Pritzker filed the case at the San Mateo County Court,
just a few blocks from the Apple headquarters.
We asked Apple for a number of technical documents
regarding the battery life in the iPod,
and we received a lot a technical data
about the battery design, about the testing of the battery.
We discovered that
the battery in the iPod
was designed from the beginning to have a really short life.
I do think that the development of the iPod
was intended to be one of planned obsolescence.
After a tense few months,
both parts hammered out a settlement:
Apple put a replacement service for the batteries,
and extended the guaranty for 2 ańos.
The claiments were offered compensation.
One thing that really bothers me personally, is that
Apple promotes itself
as a young, hip, forward thinking company.
And for a company like that, not to have a good environment policy
that allows consumers to return products
for proper recycling
is in contra to their message.
Planned obsolescence produces a constant stream of waste
which is shipped to 3rd world countries, such as Ghana in Africa.
It's between 8 or 9 years now,
when I noticed that a lot of containers came to Ghana
with electronic waste.
We are talking about end-of-life computers
about end-of-life televisions
which nobody wants in the developed countries.
Shipping electronic waste to 3rd world countries
is forbidden by international law.
But the merciants use a simple trick:
they declare the waste as second-hand goods.
More than 80% of the electronic waste that arrives in Ghana
is totally be unrepair
and whole container are abandoned in the dumbsides all around the country.
We are here at the dumbside of Agbogbloshie.
In the past, we had this beautiful river called Odaw river,
...
It had so much fish.
After the school, actually not very far from here,
we came to play football and hang around the river.
The fishermen would organize boat rides.
But now it's all finished, it's all gone.
And that makes me really really sad and it makes me angry.
These days, there are no school kids playing here after class.
Instead, youngsters from poor families come here looking for scrapmetal.
They burn the plastic covered cables to salvage the metal inside.
What is left,
is picked up from the younger children looking for any tiny pieces of metal
which the older boys may have missed.
Those behind the shipments say:
"well, we try to break the digital divide...
between Europe, America and then the rest as Africa, like Ghana.
But the reality is that the computers that arrive here
does not work.
It makes no sense to receive
if you cannot deal with it
and the country is used as the world's trash bin.
The trash that has been so long hidden from view
is now coming in our life
and we have no longer reason to avoid it.
The waste economy is reaching its last legs
because fisically there is no space to put the waste.
In the course of time, we've come to realize
that the planet we're living on cannot sustain that forever.
There is a limit of natural resources
and there is a limit to energy resources.
Posterity will never forgive us.
...the throw-away attitudes
the throw-away life styles of people in the advanced countries.
People all over the world
have started acting against planned obsolescence.
Mike Anane is fighting against it from receiving it.
He has started by collecting information.
This is where I keep the waste which have property targets.
This says "AMU Centre, North-West Sjaelland", it's from Denmark.
This is from Germany, send here just to be damned.
Westminster college,
Apple should know better: Apple is a company that says to be ecologic
There are a lot of Apple products that are being damned here.
We have a data base with the asset targets and contacts
and telephone numbers of the companies that owned
the electronic waste damned in Ghana.
Mike Anane plannes to turn this information
into evidence in a Court case.
We need to take some action, some punitive measure.
We need to process people,
so they stop dumping e-waste in Ghana.
Marcos is on the internet again
looking for a way to extend the life of his printer.
He has discovered a Russian website who offers a free software
for printers with a counter chip.
The programmer has even gone to the trouble
of explaining his personal motivation:
This happens due of a bad construction,
this is their business model,
not a good one for users and the environment.
So I found the way to create a userfriendly software
to allow the reset of the counter.
Marcos doesn't know what to expect,
but downloads the software anyway.
From a small village in France,
John Thackara fights planned obsolescence
by helping share business and design ideas,
ideas which come from all over the globe.
In the poorer countries, the things are repaired automatically.
The idea to throw away a product because it breaks
is unthinkable for somebody in the South.
In India, there is actually a word, "jugaad",
that describes the tradition of being able to fix things,
pretty much regardless of the complexity of it.
We try to find people who are actively doing projects
rather than making abstract statements
about how awful things are or that it has to be changed.
One of these people is Warner Phillips,
descendent of the dynasty of lightbulb manufacturers.
I remember my grandfather taking me to
the Phillips' factories
to show me how lightbulbs were mass manufactured
which is very cool.
Nearly a 100 years after the creation of the lightbulb cartel,
Warner Philips follows the family tradition,
but with a different approach:
he produces a LED-bulb which lasts 25 years.
It's not like there is a green world and there is a business world.
Business and sustaintibility is going hand in hand.
Actually, it's the best basis to build the business on.
The only way to do this
is to consider the true cost
of the resources that have been used.
Also look at the energy consumption,
also the indirect consumption of transportation.
The transport sector would pay the actual costs of shipping, -
- not to mention the fact that oil is unrenewable, -
- if the current price was multiplied by 20 or 30.
...
Fighting against planned obsolescence
can also be achieved by rethinking the engineering and the production of the goods.
A new concept called "cradle to cradle",
claims that if the factories works as nature
planned obsolescence itself would become obsolete.
saving, reduction, zero waste, etc.
But nature doesn't save anything, eg. when a cherry blossoms...
...
Nature produces abundanly,
but fallen blossoms, dead leafs and other discarded materials are not waste.
They become nutrients for other organisms.
Nature produces no waste, only nutrients.
Braungart believes that industry can imitate this virtuous circle of nature.
He proved that this is possible when he redesigned the production process
of a Swiss textile company.
Imagine a sofa or a chair with a fabric like this; -
- it's decorations are so toxic that
it must be handled as hazardous waste.
Braungart found that hundreds of highly toxic chemicals
were used at the factory.
For the production of the new fabrics,
Braungart and his team reduced the list
at 36 sustances, all of them biodegradable.
Now we select edible materials.
You should be able to have this with your muesli.
In a waste-based society,
short-life products will cause problems of waste.
But if manufactureres use nutrients,
the products can become something new.
For the more radical critics of planned obsolescence,
reforming production is not enough:
they want to rethink our entiry economic system and our values.
A true revolution requires a cultural change, -
- a paradigm shift and a change in mentality.
This revolution is called "De-growth".
Serge Latouche travels from conference to conference
explaining how to get out of the growth society alltogether.
Anti-Growth is a provocative slogan that will break -
the way of thought
that considers infine growth to be possible and sustainable.
It marks the necessity to change our logic.
The main message of anti-growth is
to reduce our environmental footprint, -
- our waste, overproduction and overconsumption.
By reducing production and consumption we get more free time -
- to develop other forms of wealth
that can't be exhausted, -
- for example friendship and learning.
...
....
...
If happiness was dependent on our consumption level, -
we should be 100% content.
We consume 26 times more than in Marx's time.
But all studies show
that people are not 20 times happier.
Because happiness is always subjective.
Critics of degrowth say that it will destroy our modern economy
and would take us straight back to the Stone Age.
To return to a society of sustainable development -
- is not to go back to the Stone Age, but to the 1960s.
It is far from the Stone Age.
Anti-Growth Society meets Ghandi's vision:
"The world is big enough
to satisfy everyone's needs," -
- "but will always be too small
to satisfy individual greed."
Marcos is installing the russian freeware on his computer.
The new software allowes him
to reset the counter chip inside his printer back to zero.
The printer inmediately unlocks.