light bulb conspiracy

We are currently living in a time where we are exposed to many social media and advertisement of new and better products. It creates desire to want the product and purchase it even sooner and frequent than we need to. Sometimes we are forced to purchase new products as the product was planned to fail in a given time. I thought i always knew that all products are manufactured with a set expiry date it was quite shocking to see it in the video how the printer has a chip deliberately placed inside to make the fail. It was surprising and annoying at the same time to see at the end of the video when the printer started running fine when he downloaded a free software. It felt like we are being tricked by the manufacturer and forced to dispose what we have purchased to replace it with a brand new one. We are the victims of planned obsolescence and consumers are derived to purchase products unwillingly.

It was interesting to study about how the planned obsolescence began. I can understand why the planned obsolescence was needed in the time of 1929 when the economy experienced deep recession and 1/4 men were unemployed and they were searching for work rather than the goods to spend money on. Bernard London's suggestion of ending the depression through the planned obsolescence by law was so that there is always a room for new goods and therefore creating a job for people. He believed that planned obsolescence will make people keep consuming, everyone would have a job and therefore reduce the depression. The shortening the life of products to increase consumer demands did work and lead the economy to grow but I do not agree with this idea. His philosophy to reduce the depression was never put into action, but 20 years later in the 1950s his idea resurfaced with a crucial twist. Instead of forcing people to the planned obsolescence, they were to be seduced by it. It became into action by the choice of consumers as the desire to purchase something more and new increased by the influence of social media. 

We are still facing this idea suggested in the 1920s. Light bulbs that are designed to last 100,000 hours did not reach the market and the standard hour of 25,000 dropped to 10,000 in less than 2 years. This means that if the light bulbs are sold at the same price, the lightbulb company will be selling 100 times more when the lives are shortened intentionally. The engineers were first instructed to design a long lasting light bulb but when the goal was achieved, they are then ordered to shorten the lifespan. This issue also existed in other forms of products such as the nylon stockings made from Dupont and fridges manufactured with a limit of 25 years. It is also evident in a movie when a young engineer who designed a everlasting thread had found himself on the run being chased by the workers who are afraid to lose their jobs. This shows that many people in the higher society who controls the manufacturing of the goods are opposed to long lasting products.

It can be seen as that planned obsolescence is actually crucial for the development of the economy and consumers are purchasing new products on their own will and there are no one forcing consumers to purchase the products, but this idea is definitely producing problems in the long run. Electronic wastes are shipped to 3rd world countries such as Ghana. More than 80% of the waste shipped to Ghana is unrepairable.  It is illegal to ship wastes to 3rd world countries, but they always have a way to get around. They claim the wastes as second hand goods, but the reality is that the electronics simply do not work. They are using special land of others as a trash bin. There are limit to natural resources and limit to where all the wastes can be placed.

The market is always producing something new and beautiful and people are being seduced to frequently repeated purchase. This is unsustainable in the long run. We are focusing on our decision based on what we can see now but we have to see the future and rethink before every purchase.It will create problems to totally reduce the planned obsolescence and high consumption but we definitely have to find a midpoint for the current and the future. First thing we should do would be to be cautious about the planned obsolescence

Peer comments

Lily nguyen
Saritaparto

Andrew jinsu bae

Deon pazpinis
Jonathon harley

rationale

Cormack design

Q1. What are the issues, difficulties or problems that my peer group found in understanding my designs from my mockup and posters?
- The main concern was if it is an existing product that I am redesigning or creating a new product.
- Reduce the benefit facts on the poster as I have to focus on selling the package not soy milk
- Avoid using window on the cardboard as it involves using adhesives and plastic
- Redesign the graphics so that it is more appealing to kids
- The product is not for everyday use as it is using too much material but one time use such as early morning dropping kids off school by busy parents
- Make them stackable
- Consider the placement of spoons
- Choose specific age group

Q2. What are my strategies for addressing the issues found? What steps should I take to ensure that my posters communicate the merits of my design in the best possible way for the cormack industry critique next week?
- I will decide on the age group for the design to be 9-12
- The graphics will be redesigned with a cartoon icon for stronger visual identity
- Developed understanding of the mechanism will be present on the poster
- Amount of text will be reduced and add more useful requirements that answers the brief
- Entire packaging will be made using PP
- Other existing products will be investigated more
- Emphasise on the importance of breakfast

RECYCLING

The 11th hour

The 11th hour

    Us humans just sit and watch the news about all the natural disasters that are happening in the world today. We tend to think they are just an isolated major event that will get better after a while. The natural disasters including flood, hurricanes and drought are in fact all linked by how humans treat the environment. We need to have more global understanding and be aware of the consequences of our action. Greatest survival strategy of human is to navigate our behaviour to what is best for the future.

    After 200 years of industrial revolution, we are so much focused in survival and to maximise comfort and satisfaction of our wants. As a response to rapid increase in population was finding new resources in the earth and using it to create basic need for human. To keep up with the increased population, we over produce whatever human wants and stock for later use as it is considered as convenient. Satisfying human desire is almost impossible and by keep doing this, we use up the earth's resource too fast. As a consequence of focusing on satisfying the human greed, nature is giving us the warning signs. Living in a human created environment and focusing on the economy makes us forget about the early wisdom and respect to the natural environment. We need to remember that we are not separated from the nature and in fact we are the nature. We need to live in harmony with the environment not focusing on politics, economy and success.

Recent years has the highest temperature since the past. We need to realise the significant relation of the temperature increase and what we are doing to the environment. We must quickly reduce the use of fossil fuel to control the increasing temperature as we all know that we are actually committing suicide by polluting the environment. The environmental impact has direct relation to the human health. We are experiencing increasing cases of early childhood cancer, premature babies, asthma, ADHD and diabetes. Food is getting poisoned and waters are becoming dangerous to swim in. All of the increasing gases build up and create global warming and not only as a reality but as a concern for the future as we are continuing what we are doing at a accelerating rate. Extinction crisis that are happening right now is not something that should be naturally occurring. Awareness should be developed before it gets to the stage where nothing can be done. We shouldn't turn our back to natures warning signs. We can help all life survive by being aware and acting to restore the earth's beauty.

Nature has become properties of the wealth as government are not responding to these environmental impacts as they are responding to something more powerful which is the fossil fuel industry. We need to realise that what nature is doing for us can never be replaced with money. Even if we develop new technologies for renewable energy, we need the natural energy to begin with. I think its an irony how we are now putting our heads together how we can use technology to use less of the natural resources. Of course the demand of the market is inevitable due to human nature of endless greed and therefore we should use what we are good at to solve this issue. Greatest challenge of our time as designers will be to design with awareness. As designers we should always be aware of what consequences our designs may lead to and as individuals we should change our behaviour towards the environment before it becomes too late to regret.

Giving packaging a new life + How its made

Giving packaging a new life

Even when I put rubbish in the recycling bin, I don't think I ever believed that I am doing much good to the environment. I think its because I never got to see the process of recycling. After watching this video, I got to realise the importance of separating the rubbish to different catagories. Even if not all people put what they should put in the recycling bin, it is not much of an issue because majority of people are cautious and all the recyclable rubbish goes through a separation stage. Everyone knows that recycling is good for the environment but not many people know that some recycled materials are essential to make new products, such as recycled papers are essential ingredient to make new toilet papers. Once they realise that recycled materials are very important resource and do get used to create new products, people will be more conscious and aware.

Sorting methods includes the use of magnets (tin cans are separated using magnets), floating on water, air blowing (plastic films), washing drums and grinding and separating. These processes can cost upto 50% of total recycling process.

Recycling plastics are a little bit more complicated. Plastics are sorted using automatic techniques in to films, bottles, PET, expended polystyrene or mixed plastics. Films get melted and re-stretched. Drainage pipes, frames, or toy car wheels can be made from recycled mix plastics.

How its made

It is very interesting to see the process of making products are always around us. I was first of all surprised by the speed it was being produced. Process of deep drawing aluminium cans produces up to 1800 per minute. Different production processes such as making corrugated cardboard, glass bottles, metal containers and can were mostly machine operated and did not require much human contact. All the process was done by machine from pressing, steaming, stacking, perforating, scoring, colouring, gluing to folding. It is interesting to see how much different tasks machines can manage and all it needs is someone to monitor the process.

The process of making corrugated cardboard was surprisingly crafty. It is just a easy process of pressing paper through the corrugator machine and gluing liners on both sides to give strength. It is amazing how one random mistake made by an individual in the 1870s developed in to an idea of making strong cardboards for product packaging.

Flexible metal container first developed in 1841 is certainly being used widely until now for packaging products like skin products and pharmaceutical products. It is a very useful for its light weight and malleability. It is also affordable and highly recyclable as aluminium can be recycled as many times as it will never deteriorate. More than 87% of aluminium cans produced in Germany is recycled. The printing on the aluminum is done by using polyester ink and tube remains flexible even after product is inserted and sealed. A layer of varnish is applied to protect the paint on cans and also in the insides to prevent aluminium being eaten away from the acid contents.

Plastic bottles and jars can also be recycled. When making PET bottles, 10% of recycled PET flaked are combined as reprocessing more than 10% of recycled PET can lose some of physical properties.

Something I have learnt after watching the video was the benefits for using tetrapak. I thought using tetrapack was not very green as the recycling process seemed very complicated but it was actually not hard at all compared to all the positive elements. Tetrapack keeps the product safe upto a year without preservation, light weight, compact and recyclable. In the recycling process, the plastic and the aluminium gets separated to be recycled and the remains are used to make cement.

Glass bottles uses less energy than producing metals and plastics as it can be recycled endlessly. The process of combining natural ingredients together to create molten glass is incredible. What human can develop with the resource available to us is amazing and endless.