This is such a bad frame of mind if you're someone who owns more than a dorm room of stuff. I used to feel like this about stuff. "Oh it's just $100 and we use it every day, totally okay to replace every few years."

But it adds up when you start having to replace 100 different "it's pretty cheap given how often we use it" items in a year.

And it's not just the cost. It's also the time you commit to being a consumer. Thinking about which one to buy, reading reviews, etc. Some people enjoy being consumers and that's fine. But it takes away from what I want to be doing with my life. I want to buy something once and not have to think about it for a long time.

I don't think people have a frame of reference in their short lives to realize just how much time they spend being consumers and how that doesn't have to be normal.

> I want to buy something once and not have to think about it for a long time.

A thousand times this ^ And ideally for everything: phone, computer, headphones, clothes, etc.

Personally, I own one pair of pants that I know will last about 2 years before I need to replace them, then just buy exactly the same pair again. Same with t-shirts, except I own about 10 of the same and replace 2 or 3 once a year (each one will last 2-3 years).

Kind of trying something similar. My jeans seem to be tough enough, but I’ve had a hard time with t-shirts. I’m looking for plain t-shirts without logos. What brands do you buy?

For nice t-shirts without logo, check Muji (their bio cotton collection) or Uniqlo (their Supima cotton collection). Less than $15, great fit, good enough durability.

For t-shirts, Banana Republic (although they keep changing the styles and colors slightly over time, which could also be considered a good thing).

For jeans, Levi's.

Haven't really tried too many brands, but those two were good enough for me that I don't feel like I need to make the decision for those two items ever again.

A little pricey, but they're merino so can be worn a few times without needing to be washed, and they're amazingly breathable and quick drying.

woolly.clothing

I don't think I own 100 items that use batteries. I mean, I'm curious, and I'll make a list, but I'm definitely not replacing things every year.

I've got a MacBook that's a few years old, an iPhone that's two years old, and AirPods that are less than a year old, and... my Apple TV remote is many years old and still only needs charging every couple of months. My Kindle is many years old and only needs charging every couple of weeks. My two USB power bricks still seem to be doing well. One is three years old, the other almost a year old. Apple Watch is about two years old, still makes it through almost two full days on a charge.

I think everything else electronic either plugs in or uses replaceable batteries (garage door opener, car keys).

I might be forgetting something, but 100 items is an order of magnitude more than I think I use, and I'm not replacing most of them most years.

And yes, I clearly consume a lot of Apple kit. I like to think I don't do so blindly, though.

I'm speaking more generally, not just about battery replacement. I cannot be in the mindset of disposable merchandise because I would be thinking about this stuff all the time.

To put this into perspective, you produce more waste with a grocery trip or a takeout order than you do with owning AirPods.

So let's start with the more impactful stuff before we get down to headphones that are used several hours a day every single day for a couple years.

Not to mention Apple has an extensive recycling program for most of their products.

> To put this into perspective, you produce more waste with a grocery trip or a takeout order than you do with owning AirPods.

That is probably only true in the US given the amount of regulation on compostable bags and boxes we have now in the EU.

Secondly, e-waste is orders of magnitude more difficult to dispose of and it often contains some rare minerals that got mined in some war zone in Africa: that should give you more of an incentive to recycle than some random styrofoam container.

Perhaps using numbers that are an order-of-magnitude out of line aren't helpful to your main point? If you're talking about replacing 100 items per year in a world where even ardent consumers of electronics own less than one-tenth that an replace, on average, none, that seems like a hard case to make.

I think there's a trend toward seeing electronics as consumable that bothers me, and I try to think carefully about my purchases, and yet somehow I've still ended up with at least eight items that use non-replaceable batteries, and maybe others that are "disposable" for other reasons.

Still, for each item I own, I've considered the "disposable" nature and yet bought it anyway.

Is the cumulative time spent screwing around reading reviews, comparing brands and choosing products more than the time spent replacing broken things? Just buying the cheapest thing that does what you are looking for saves a heck of a lot of time.

Everybody loves to go on about quality but quality doesn't always pan out in terms of time or money cost. There's plenty of cases where some thing you've bought will meet its end in a way unrelated to whether it's high or low quality. If you really want to optimize you have to tailor your purchasing to your specific use case.

I've tried all kinds of strategies.

A simple approach is to just pull the trigger quickly on whatever has a million 5 star reviews and looks acceptable and is cheap. This feels environmentally offensive. Throwing away something that 99% works with one broken part. I feel sick when I have to do this.

Another approach is to try to get something expensive but durable and fixable. Unfortunately we live in a crappy future where nobody has any pride anymore and nothing's built to last decades. I have a 30 year old jigsaw I got from my grandfather and I frickin' love it.

There used to be an expectation of longevity in the electronics we purchase. Even while Moore's law was in full effect, you could find good uses for a 6 year old computer. Today's computer hardware can easily remain fully usable for a decade. The notion of buying a laptop or phone, let alone headphones, every year is ludicrous and actively harmful to the environment.

You must have lived in a different "Used to be" than I did. I owned multiple Walkman style cassette players back in the 80s and if you got 2 years use out of those foam covered headphones, it was a small miracle. Even buying replacement foam, the cords got snagged and destroyed quickly. Also, the cheap plastic doors on the players were notoriously prone to failing. Not to mention all of them were powered by disposable batteries which powered them for just a few hours and had to be tossed out.

I agree about the headphones, but I got a full decade of use from my WM-D6 Walkman Pro and its (optional, removable) rechargeable battery pack. I replaced it with a WM-D6C which still worked the last time I tried it, a few years ago now.

High-quality gear was definitely available in the '80s, if you were willing to pay for it — and might have been cheaper in the long run.

So instead of tiny, expensive headphones last 18-24 months, you had an even more expensive cassette player which might last 5 years, with headphones that lasted less than a year, and expensive bulky rechargeable battery packs which lasted about 6 months if you were lucky.

How is this better than a set of headphones which last 18+ months? Just the NiCd battery packs were something like 20 times bulkier than the AirPods and lasted less than a third the time with careful use. Normal replacement cycle on those battery packs would be more expensive over 2 years than my AirPods, particularly if you consider inflation.

I'm not suggesting it was better overall; I'm not sure how you read me that way. I'm just saying that reliable gear was available.

(Only 6 months out of a set of NiCds??? I got multiple years out of more than one set. NiCds are very easy to take care of; just remember that they need exercise. Always drain them fully before charging, and make sure not to overcharge.)

Exactly this. When in-ear buds became the standard (90's?), the lifespan would be dictated by how quickly the cable frayed.

Step 1: superglue

Step 2: tape

Step 3: buy new ones

Well, batteries have never had a long useful life, and since the batteries (Airpods + case) make up most of the mass, replacing the battery would have most of the environmental impact.

The answer then, is that goods like this may not be worthwhile purchases, comparing the environmental impact they cause to the limited (nonexistent?) benefits that they bring to our society.

And who gets to decide “the benefits to society”?

Could you say the same about everything that uses a battery? We could all just be using payphones.

I'd be glad if we all could use mobile phones where we are able to change the battery. There is no way around, batteries are wearing parts. And I know that most phones (and even laptop computers) use small/weird form factors to use the even the last bit of space available, but I'd be glad to do with a little less battery life, if I just could switch batteries.

That still doesn’t help the environment. The batteries can be changed and they still have to be disposed of. Having less battery capacity doesn’t help. In fact, you would need to change them more often.

I’ve been using the same etymotic ear buds since 2004.

Let alone headphones? You could throw away a pair of AirPods every day and it would still constitute a tiny fraction of what (Americans) produce in waste on a yearly basis.

"It doesn't matter how much garbage I produce, everyone else makes way more!"

Replace "everyone" with "large corporations" and I think it's a pretty sound argument.

Uuuugh. This line of thinking, though rooted in good intentions (hold corporations responsible for better behavior) is deeply flawed.

Corporations don't exist in a vacuum. They have customers they're serving. We don't get to just pretend our behavior doesn't matter because some bogeymen (corporations) are doing worse things, then continue to voluntarily hand our money to those very same corporations.

We (individuals) bear responsibility, too. We vote with out dollars. Yes, we can't control the other 7.7 Billion people on the planet. But we can control our own behavior, and lead by example.

I like this line of thinking too, but there should be a line drawn somewhere between consumer's responsibility and law maker's responsibility to hold corporations accountable for their environmental impact. It is not a single person at home dumping pollution into a river or factory smoke into the air. And it's downright difficult for an average consumer to know what impact each option for a purchase has on the environment.

I think it's an argument somewhat like the "don't water your lawn in a drought" argument - even in aggregate, domestic/consumer impact is miniscule. 2005 numbers say that domestic water use is 8.5% of freshwater use, and of that, irrigation is at most 5.3% (the "other" category). Yet we in California were told to let our lawns die or given money to convert to high-efficiency landscape.

An average shower uses 17 gallons of water. A single pound of almonds uses 1,900 gallons.

Anyway, all this to say that I think the GP's argument is convincing.

> The notion of buying a laptop or phone, let alone headphones, every year is ludicrous and actively harmful to the environment.

Is this notion in your head? My electronics, especially recent ones, last many years.

That is the point I was making. The devices last (as we both have experienced), but today it is "fashionable" to dispose of them and buy new ones on a schedule much shorter than their lifespans (because of some new gimmick that provides an inconsequential improvement in the usability of the newer model).

My point is that perhaps you might have that impression, but what does the data say?

Even higher income people I know don't swap out their phones and laptops every year. It's a pain in the ass to reconfigure everything, and even when the devices get replaced, the old ones get passed down to the kids or elders.

http://www.asymco.com/2018/02/27/the-number/

Perhaps low end devices are getting replaced more and more often, but I would bet high end devices get used for much longer. Especially with a widening wealth/income gap, how would people even afford to replace working electronics for no reason?

That's your argument? That we should now expect high-end consumer electronics to last as long as something that is literally consumable? Weak sauce.

Yes, if the _only_ reason you need to replace an item is because the battery can't be replaced, that is only because it is in the manufacturer's interest to make it that way. It is not in your interest. They've got to keep you on the endless upgrade cycle one way or another, it gets harder as products mature and become 'good enough.

Why charge your phone, you can just buy a new one tomorrow.

Perhaps there are alternatives that allow you to refill your plate with the original nice dinner for a fraction of the cost of the plate+dinner.

Just don't go to Starbucks 50 times!

Yeah you might want to read up on climate chance.

Your dinner isn’t made of mold injected plastic.

Dinner for many people in the world was made using fertiliser, or feedstock was. Fertiliser is often nitrogen based, made from ammonia, made from natural gas. Using natural gas and oil is often worse than plastics (which somewhat embed the energy).

https://grist.org/article/2010-02-11-tracking-u-s-farmers-su...

you are not required to buy ugly wireless earbuds with a battery that only last a few hours... you are required to eat though