Most of the appliances I discard needed only minor repairs, and once fixed would have been good for years of further faithful service. So why do I strip them and throw them out? Simple - because nobody wants to buy them. Nobody wants to spend $80 to repair a 20-year-old TV, when they can go buy a new cheapie for $99 at the nearest Wal-Mart. For many years, foolish and gullible consumers have been discarding their old, well-built American and Canadian-made appliances and replacing them with cheap, foreign junk - and it's having a devastating effect on more than just our landfills. Read on for some more disturbing information.....
The problem began more than 30 years ago, when a few manufacturers got the bright idea to cheapen the quality of their electronics. They could sell them for much less than their higher-quality competition, and consumers were soon buying up the cheaper units by the million. So the other manufacturers retaliated by producing an even cheaper product, and selling at an even lower price. This trend has continued to this very day, and today we have some of the cheapest, most poorly-built appliances imaginable. But do consumers care? Nooo. As long as they can get the latest, greatest piece of junk and have it last a year or so, they don't care how full the landfills get or what industries they end up hurting.
Sales of cheap foreign products are having a terrible effect on domestic industries. In the early 50's, for example, all TV sets in North America were made in North America. Most other electronics and many other products (including cars) were the same way. But over the coming years, domestic sales were slowly and surely crushed by the sales of foreign appliances. Japanese electronics came first, though most of their products were of very high quality. Then countries like Korea got into the act. Throughout the 90's, ever-cheaper electronics started coming from all over - Mexico, France, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and finally - China. Chinese electronics have dealt the most damage to the electronics by far, mainly because of the enormous volume of garbage they continue to pump out.
So what effect does this actually have on the economy? Just ask anyone who used to sell second-hand electronics, or repair electronics or virtually any kind of appliance. Notice I said "used to" - that's past tense - because chances are anyone in those industries is no longer employed. The widespread sale of cheap, foreign appliances has discouraged most consumers from getting any broken appliance repaired, and has all but wiped out the market for used electronics. And I know this firsthand. I once depended on the repair and sale of broken TV's, VCR's, and similar electronics to bring me a modest living. Having gotten started at it near the end of it's good days (the late 90's), the repair business was no way to get rich. But it did pay the bills, at least for a while. But within just a few short years, I watched the value of used appliances sink faster than the Titanic. 27" TV's that once sold for $200 in 2001 are worth about $60 at most today. Repair jobs that once fetched $150 a few years ago, would be lucky to earn $50 today. So it's no surprise that when an appliance needs any considerable amount of time or money to be repaired, it ends up going to the garbage - and that's where most of the stuff in my video has come from.
And buying cheap foreign electronics does more than just hurt the economy, and the environment. What most people are either unaware of - or they choose to ignore - is the fact that countries like China rely heavily on questionable sources of labor. Slave labor is used, prison labor is used, but most frequently and disturbingly child labor is used. That's right, those bargain-priced trinkets you picked up at Walmart for almost nothing, might very well have been made by a 6-year-old forced to work for 5 or 10 cents an hour, under goodness-knows what conditions. It's ironic; most people wouldn't dream of letting their children work in such conditions, yet these same people buy up tons of Chinese junk from Walmart without a care in the world. If hypocrisy were an olympic sport, there wouldn't be enough gold medals in the world to go around.
There's another reason Chinese products are so cheap to import, and it's a fact not very well known over here. The fact is, China's communist (that's right, communist) goverment purposely devalues their own currency, to encourage countries like Canada and the USA to buy their products. This of course makes things hard for the Chinese public in general, but if westerners don't care about those little kids in the sweatshops, they certainly aren't going to give a hoot about their poverty-stricken parents.
Time to start wrapping up this long rant. The next time you go to buy some cheap piece of junk from a place like Walmart, stop and think about what effect this is going to have. By buying such products from such discount retailers, you are:
1. Supporting countries like China which employ
slave, prison, and widespead child labor
2. Supporting communist regimes (China)
3. Increasing the burden on landfills by encouraging
people to buy new (and discard their old) appliances
4. Damaging the western economy and costing good,
hard-working people their jobs
5. Risking the health and safety of people, especially our
children, by supporting the import of sometimes
contaminated (lead etc.) and unsafe products
6. Supporting the largest-polluting countries in the world (China)
7. Supporting corporations (especially Walmart) which have
built their success by destroying markets, and putting people
out of work here in North America
8. Causing yourself frustration in the not-so-distant future, when
that cheap appliance inevitably breaks down - and can't be fixed
There, I think I've said enough. Maybe now you'll think twice before criticizing me about the
stuff I throw out, and realize why I throw out so much stuff.
Some further reading:
Child Labor:
Human Resources Watch
International Labor Rights Forum
Anti Walmart / Walmart Facts:
Wakeup Walmart
Walmart Watch
Hel-Mart (my personal favorite)
Landfills filling up:
Environment Canada Envirozine Article