Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

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> they toss perfectly good large appliances too.

Oh they do, they really do. I worked at a recycling factory in the UK, the amount of household appliances, TVs, computers and computer parts, laptops, phones that people toss away is staggering.

Many are in absolutely perfect working condition! Like, a 48" Samsung TV and a 52 inch 4K Sony TV would come in, we'd test them, nothing wrong with them. I can only assume someone moved house and just left everything, or they upgraded to bigger TVs.

Not even going to mention the washers, dryers, dishwashers, fridges, about a quarter of them would be in good working condition. Who throws away a perfectly fine washer? Why? A new model has nothing new inside technology-wise, I can promise you that.

It was against company policy, but employees would take them home, either for a low price (got myself a nice Neff microwave oven and a Bosch vacuum for £10 each... retail price in the hundreds) or just by being friends with a supervisor...

I'm actually glad about that, because otherwise they'd be loaded into containers and sent to Asia or Africa somewhere. Absolutely ridiculous.

> Who throws away a perfectly fine washer? Why? A new model has nothing new inside technology-wise, I can promise you that.

When I first moved in my house I didn't have a job, so I bought a lot of cheap appliances. Most of them still work, and I expect them to keep on working with almost no maintenance for years to come. However, they have some serious downsides: they are energy inefficient, they make a lot of noise, and they do not necessarily fit my future needs.

For example, now that I have a partner, my fridge is a bit small. And instead of running the washer once every two weeks, we're running it two or more times a week. Every time I run the washer, the floor the washer is on becomes basically unlivable for about half an hour or so due to loud noise of the centrifuge.

I do not want to buy new stuff, particularly because the old stuff "still works". And getting rid of my old stuff in a nice way is not easy either: Because they have wear and tear, goodwill and second-hand shops are not overly enthusiastic about taking them from me. Unless I can find someone to take something over (for free!), I am left with moving it to the recycling place because I do not have any storage space in my house.

I should've mentioned these were (and are) mostly midrange to high end stuff.

The cheaper models are the ones that go straight to scrap, because they're unfixable - poor electronics with no water protection, low quality bearings and drum spiders that fail catastrophically (and the drums are welded instead of using bolts = unfixable) and counterweights that simply crumble.

I get it when they break and there's no other choice but to chuck them. But throwing away good appliances is just unthinkable for me. I use them all until they fail, fix them and use them some more, until they're unfixable :D

Worst case, I'd try to sell them for cheap or give them to someone who needs them, there's plenty of people in every country.

The efficiency of washers and dishwashers has been the same for about two decades now. There's simply nothing that can be improved inside.

Dryers have had a decent improvement with heat pumps, other than that, it's the same design that's been around for decades.

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