We've been burning stuff for a while now as a species, oh, about four or five millennia most probably by all accounts. 

Man discovered fire and never looked back. 

And the wheel. Pointy things to kill. Stuff that goes bang. And a bunch of good stuff as well bu that often seems to get lost in the conversation at times, especially with the advocates of burning and blowing things up.  

You'd think, that after a few thousand years, we'd have evolved more. Gotten better. Learned to be cleaner and stop killing one another. 

For sure, we have gotten better, no doubt about it. We're way more efficient in burning things, all sorts of things as we're no longer restricted to a fire to gather around and we worked out how to kill on a massive scale as well as many other monumental technological achievements, often through confilct. But have we really come all that far from cavemen with fire and spear?

You'd think though that we'd have progressed since we discovered electricity and that very electricity doesn't need us to be endlessly burning things to produce, there are other ways. 

All this, however, has little to do with domestic appliances, aside from the electricity that they run on. Perhaps. 

Going Green

Ever since a hole was discovered in the ozone layer a few decades ago the move towards more responsible manufacturing and energy use has grown and grown to the point where legislators around the world have put in place laws and standards to try to force manufacturers to clean up their acts but also to make their products more environmentally friendly as well. 

The public, too, has moved toward more energy-efficient products, but seemingly, this is more to do with saving money than saving the planet. And, that'd be fine if it were the case that the two went hand in hand. 

Right from the jump, when the ozone thing kicked off and subsequently, R12 gas was going to get outlawed, the knee-jerk reaction was to move to R134a and then to R600a, iso-butane. 

R134 had problems, R600 does too but it's now the defacto standard. 

But R12 was easier and better for servicing. Now it was outlawed and after a few years you couldn't get it loads of older refrigeration units were scrapped. 

Yes, you could change the systems to the newer gas but, it was too expensive and onerous to do. 

What's better for the environment, a few grams of gas in the atmosphere or several score kilos of appliance being dumped?

These are the sort of conundrums that are or can be vexing and all the while the public couldn't give two hoots, all they want is a fridge that cools their food, they could care less what gas it runs on. The same is true when they buy a new one, they don't give a stuff about the gas it uses or much else it'd seem so long as it is the right size, shape, colour and most importantly, the right price. 

Then you go to laundry and we get all sorts of, honestly spurious claims about being "green", "recyclability" and more but people don't care. They care about it being the biggest load, the fastest spin, the right badge on it and the right price. 

Other products followed in the same vein and violla, we get a race to the bottom on price all the while sacrificing durability, performance, repairability and more simply as people do not care about that when buying, they only get that bad news later, too late. 

Balancing Act

The reason I'm waffling on about this is that it is a balancing act, you need to try to weigh up the environmental impact of cheap, essentially throwaway products against those that are more durable and long lasting. 

I would argue that repairable, durable and longevity trumps a minuscule (and they are) energy saving through forced or otherwise replacement of existing products in the field. 

Thankfully this notion has started to take hold in recent times with the notion of a circular economy and moves to have a right to repair but, it's not enough and it's not fast enough. This stuff is easy and if made to, any producer can make it so, the reality is it's not in their commercial interest to do so individually but, if forced collectively then all are in the same boat and none have a commercial advantage. 

Each producer could and, should try to ensure that their products have a reasonable lifespan and last as well as being made in such a manner to make them repairable. It is my view that they have a responsibility to do so, to everyone. Not just serve up PR spins on minor changes that are usually often meaningless in the real world use of the goods. 

If governments and the population are serious about having clean air and saving the planet then they need to wake up and push harder. The technologies and ability to make appliances last far longer and to be far more eco-friendly exist now. 

Only the will to act doesn't.