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Comment by edrxty | Hacker News Reader

Seconded, though I'd add that with the current concerns about climate change and resource utilization, we need to think a bit more about product lifecycle and this is a reasonable way of illustrating that.

If the embodied environmental impact of a product increases 10% to make it last 100% longer then we need to think about making that change rather than producing twice as many to replace the broken ones.

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one thing about some of the shitty products out there today is we got MUCH better at making things out of less material. So they break easier and wear out faster, but we've been able to reduce material usage along with price.

If you're a person who loses pens or holds onto them so long the ink dries up, it'd be better to waste an object made as cheaply as possible than one made to last.

This is a balance to play as well.

Absolutely, it's a complex game.

The easiest way to clean it up significantly is to better tax industry such that energy, resource usage, and transportation are all represented in the price such that the economy actually reflects the environmental impact of production rather than just the business costs of the moment.

Indeed, and I think we should be thinking about pricing the recycling or disposal costs too (even if that's difficult or inherently imprecise), as well as giving incentives for products with effective recycling supply chains (or simply low disposal rates! i.e. longlasting products). I think it's worth not being too heavy-handed about this, because low income people would be hit the hardest most likely, but I think something like this would help significantly.

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