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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

It's not obvious to me that current appliances are not lasting (and/or not repairable) and it's not obvious to me either that longer lasting appliances are necessarily better.

Where are the end to end stats that show that this is better than recycling an old appliance to replace it with a new one that is more energy and water efficient?

Where are the actual stats that show that breaking down just out of warranty with no parts available is a real issue?

Also, there are no "other people" we all are consumers of these appliances.

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In what possible way could using the same fridge for 10 years be worse than buying and dumping a fridge every 3 years?

Fridges don't break down after 3 years. Please let's have a serious discussion.

In what possible way could using the same washing machine for 25 years be worse than buying and dumping a washing machine every 8-10 years?

Mine did.

Mine did. One of the PCBs was designed in a way that when the fridge light breaks it causes the whole pcb to fry and the fridge stops functioning. Thankfully we were able to get a replacement pcb because the manufacturer still supplied it.

Bad example, it is actually better to replace older fridges (older than 10 years though) with modern low energy designs, obviously with the expectation that they'd last longer than 3 years.

Fridges and Freezers are the only appliances I'm aware of where it works out like that though.

Edit: Here's a case study for those that don't believe me.

http://www.t2c.org.uk/chilling/new-case-study-of-20-yr-old-f...

That's just savings in end-user monetary expenses, which is a proxy for energy use, but not necessarily a good one.

I wonder whether this calculation holds once you account for the energy used to develop, construct, market and transport the new fridges that replace the older-but-working fridges. It's a genuine question - I haven't seen such calculation done. My current intuition is that the extra marginal energy used in manufacturing a new fridge dwarfs the energy savings of replacing the old one before it dies.

The link gives a figure of 700kwh saving a year.

This [1] gives the embodied energy for a fridge as 5900 Mj which equals 1600 kwh.

So broadly speaking you new fridge 'pays' for itself in 2 years. I suspect its worse that, but even if its 5 years, my point still stands.

[1] https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Appliance

If the current appliances are already set to last and be reparable, then the regulation is a NOOP as far as business is concerned. So there's an insignificant cost to the business, and the consumer's get some reassurance. Seems like there's no need to argue against the regs, then.

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