Cosima Dannoritzer | Planned Obsolescence & The E-Waste Tragedy

00:05 Puppet masters almost surely have a clearly maybe something there and until you thoroughly tested every last course just did you know the less you really do? That's true, Dr. Seuss! And what would our THC be cause we're buying to us just a without THC The Higher Side Chat Show Award Company

00:43 Alright, Hiresight Chatters. By now we've seen enough examples to know the world's largest companies do everything they can to undermine international law, the environment and consumers themselves if it means another dollar for shareholders. And while obese ignorant cheerleaders for capitalism wave their American flags they don't see the damage done behind the thin facade of happy-go-lucky marketing flashing lights bright colors and a few smiling models We're taught that capitalism is the height of human progress, that it's a system that breeds innovation and efficiency. Yet we hear plenty of stories of suppressed technologies and buried patents including everything from cancer cures to new transportation methods so the titans of industry can tell us its perfect world while they sweep the problems crimes conspiracies under the rug but true costs and missed opportunities are too vast ever really be measured appropriately

01:34 Well, today's guest Cosima Danneritzer knows these things all too well. She is a filmmaker and activist who has been focused on highlighting problems with the big machine and has made two amazing documentaries with The Lightbulb Conspiracy which exposes the practice known as planned obsolescence and The E-Waste Tragedy which tackles the throwaway nature of the Western world and the terrible problems it causes all over this island Earth Both unique subjects I don't see talked about nearly enough and I can't wait to get into it. All the way from Spain, Cosima welcome to the higher side! Hi, thanks for having me. Absolutely! Thanks so much for doing this your documentary The Lightbulb Conspiracy is really one of my favorites out there it's so unique and I learned so much that really just blew my mind things that i've never heard anyone else really talking about before or since So to get you here to talk about it that's a real treat but before we do get into the content tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a filmmaker on these underexposed topics

02:33 Well, I actually initially thought that I would like to work in Hollywood and make big fiction productions or whatever. And then I realized at one stage when I was making coffee in a production company somewhere as a student that in reality there's stories out there you couldn't invent and suddenly I found myself attracted to documentary. And then recently also the other thing that has been happening is people have been getting more interested in ecology and how the economy works, how all these machines work whole world going and in a way that's kind of the response to that also, you know. To put out information I think as a filmmaker, as a documentary filmmaker our job really is to provide information and tell stories and put facts on the screen so people can make up their minds and say well now we know this what are we gonna do about it? Do i like it or not like it should I change this? Is this acceptable

03:26 Because a camera is a wonderful thing. A camera can go beyond statistics, it can take people somewhere and show them the country. Talking about waste for instance instead of saying we've produced that many tons of waste you can actually show where it ends up. You could show horrible dump sites where children are recycling and that creates a whole other dimension. So yeah, I feel lucky and i think it's a fascinating profession and I think it's a very good way of exchanging information and starting debates Yeah, well said. Noble goals for sure and to get into the content of the light bulb conspiracy for people who don't really know what is planned obsolescence? Well somebody actually in the 50s defined it in a really surprising revealing sort of way designer called Brooke Stevens who said that planned obsolescence is the desire of consumers to own something a little sooner than is necessary

04:21 And what he actually meant by that is like this particular designer, he was using design to tempt people. But planned obsolescence actually a lot of the time goes even further It means that we don't actually want the new version yet, but there's something inside it. Something breaks. It could be a chip or could be a weak piece of plastic or metal or whatever and something breaks and then you have to replace it. And this is programmed. It means basically that designers with all the talents people have and all the training they've had, they actually use their talents to make something on purpose with a limited lifespan. That's planned obsolescence

04:59 But planned obsolescence comes in different forms. It comes in, you know something breaks nothing you can do about it especially as an amateur so you buy a new one but there's also psychological obsolescence in the way for instance fashion is a good example You know we have a jumper it's still fine you know it still warms us it's cold outside it's perfectly okay but we quite fancy the new models that just come out We like the color that's in season this year So if we throw something away that's still perfectly all right Which means planned obsolescence is not always an evil thing imposed by big, evil companies. It's something that we participate in and a lot of the time we do it quite willingly but other times we don't do it quite as willingly. It's quite complex then there are lots of factors at work. Right yeah! And this is such an interesting area to me I mean shortening the life cycle of products to increase consumer demand

05:54 And there are those two ways to do it. There's the marketing aspect, you know which happens largely in the smartphone arena everybody's got to get that new phone every year and that's just advertising manipulation. That is the psychological side but it is the fail by design stuff that is so interesting to me and it happens. And a lot of products that we take for granted, and we assume that technology is as good as it can be but in so many cases you find out that's just not true. If we wanted to get more into history about planned obsolescence where did this idea of building things to break down initially come from?

06:36 I think there was a big change round about the 1920s, around about then when mass production took off. When we had big assembly lines that were becoming more efficient and then we're turning things out and you know things started getting a little bit cheaper and a lot more people started buying them that's not bad thing in itself but Suddenly all the manufacturers started getting worried. They thought, you know what if everyone has bought everything and these things last forever? And then suddenly this amazing boom is going to come to an end and the factories will stop working people won't have jobs we won't make any money so it's almost like I see a point now when there were two roads that could have decided to maybe produce less

07:18 but they decided to produce even more and just shorten the lifespans to keep this going. And, you know that's also the origins of our growth economy that we have today and it definitely kind of forked in a road and then went that way. And then from then onwards this whole concept has just been expanded so the first example at the time for instance was the light bulb At the time you could buy light bulbs which lasted two or three thousand hours, that's about two or three years or whatever if you would use them in this day and age. And if you look at the advertising all the companies were showing off with mine lasts longer than yours kind of thing it's brighter and it lasts longer that was kind of a too big arguments. This suddenly disappears and all the light bulb manufacturers basically they got together they had a meeting in Geneva apparently just happened over Christmas so nobody knew what was going on

08:14 and they decided let's limit the lifespan of light bulbs and actually reduce the lifespan, and then we can sell that many more units. And if you look at the internal documents from all these companies, you can see all this little calculations that were doing how many more bulbs it would be able to sell, and they were doing specific lifespan tests to reduce the lifespan so, you know, the filament would break more easily And they had a system whereby all the manufacturers had to send light bulbs to central office in Geneva every month. let them burn and then see how long they lasted. And if they lasted beyond what was set at that time, then there was actually a fine to pay so if you go again into the archives you find all these invoices and people saying okay well we have trouble paying this but we promise we won't do it again. Then someone else saying well okay we limited the lifespan of our light bulbs but now we're selling too many now you're getting worried about the quota... So you see those kind

09:19 highly specialized internal debate going on that wouldn't happen these days anymore because we also have to remember this is the time when there was no anti-monopoly laws or anything like that, there was no consumer protection. So all of these light bulb companies just did this and published the lifespans that were considered acceptable and they kept lowering them. And eventually, that arrives at 1000 hours in around the 40s, that's about a year. Funnily enough, it is still the lifespan we have for incandescent bulbs now! That makes you wonder... You think since the 40s so that is like 70 years surely there could have been a better system but of course they weren't looking for that why should they change something

10:02 that's working for them. Right, and yeah I love the example and the part of the documentary where you're talking about the light bulb cartel that group who formed and it's so wild to hear that they used to actually test these light bulbs and they would find companies that were making bulbs that outlasted the 1000 hour standard It's just mind blowing and just such a micro example of a problem that probably spans to every product on the Western market, to some degree. And I don't hear about it anywhere else. This is very interesting. Apparently they got there were some patents filed years later for bulbs as high as 100000 hours but of course they never make it to market

10:48 Yes, there was a bulb invented in Berlin in the 80s and it's supposed to last 150 000 hours. And that actually had quite specific And so, the idea being that you would save energy or some sending trucks out at night to replace bulbs you know because a lot of the bulbs and traffic lights. I mean an hour lot of them are LEDs but at the time when they were in Kansas and they would send out trucks regularly and try and change the balls before that would burn out so you know you wouldn't have any accidents. used in a very particular field, even though it uses a tiny bit more electricity. But that would have been offset by the fact that you wouldn't have to send these crews out all the time. You put bulb in and then probably lasts forever. But yeah, I didn't go into mass production and if you look at patterns on the internet, you find a lot of patterns for bulbs. So you find a lot of patterns for also devices that can be put between the bulb and your device and see whether he can be more efficient with the energy. I think people had a lot of ideas but

11:51 Since the old fashioned bulb was working really well as a business proposition, no one really went into exploring that. This is working so why change it? I think it's ironic also because the lightbulb was like a symbol for bright ideas and the future and progress and innovation. Then they pick just that particular object and make it like the first official victim of plant obsolescence kind of tells you a lot about the time we live in, you know. That's around also the 20s is the time when you realise that the lifespan starts disappearing from advertising

12:29 If you look at modern advertising, very rarely they tell you how long something is going to last. They're much more likely to tell you that you're going to be really cool or you are going to have more girls or you know, you'll have more success with the boys or you are gonna have more friends or you're going to be happier. You know they actually don't really go into technical specifications that much anymore and During the lifespan at the beginning of a light bulb catalogue it was actually prohibited to talk about lifespan. That was one of the first things they kind of took off the menu at that time so people wouldn't be able to spot the difference and see how their lifespan was decreasing year after year

13:07 Hmm. Wow, and that is so interesting the irony in the light bulb as a symbol of ideas I like that and what's amazing too is this fire station in Livermore California actually has a yearly festival because they have a bulb That's been burning since 1901 and they find it super interesting when really They just have what should have been a standard bulb And it slipped past the cartel I guess over 100 years ago and is still in the socket, in the fire station. But it's just so silly when you see this festival and these people that are just paying attention to this bulb and then you know the real history It's kind of goofy. Well also this bulb is interesting because I think its pre-cartel So comes from a time when

13:55 When the market wasn't quite as centralized yet, now you have General Electric and you have kind of the big players on a market. You know, you have Philips, you have Osram, he named them but at that time electricity was a new thing so there were lots and lots of new people. A bit like today when everybody goes into startups or they go into some kind of internet business or app or something. At that time one of things we might want to go into is sort of something electricity related and light bulbs and machines whatever This particular bulb came from a company who were proud of their long lifespan, so that's what you would do at the time. You would argue with ads! The other thing is though the bulb is quite dim it's not as strong as some of the bulbs we have today, so you have to take that into account if your bulb burns slightly less brightly then it's not going to die as fast

14:44 But still, this bulb is now over a century old. It's had a 100 year birthday party. It has a little webcam point at it so you can look at it anytime from anywhere on the planet and it's always burning. In the meantime generations of firemen have come and gone and three webcams have gone broken and the bulb was still there. For me its like a symbol It wouldn't be correct to say we need these old bulbs, they're the only bulbs that are really long lasting. I'm sure we could also be more energy efficient and all that but it's a symbol for the change of an attitude that was happening at the time. And you can see that also in a lot of magazines at the time for instance there was the marketing people at this home they were saying things like a product that doesn't wear out is a tragedy for business and things like that

15:37 looking at all these things that people had in their homes like the silver forks or furniture that had come down to generations and they were also working hard on discrediting these things because the idea of having something in your family, that's been there for generations. That was a venerated idea and this also needed to be changed cause once the state of people where you know this is really old, this is older, this is old-fashioned and your modern person There's all these articles where they're attacking all these heritage objects in a way because they wanted people to feel modern and go out and throw everything out, buy everything new and then keep replacing it much more regularly than they did before. So all these traditional objects were seen as a sort of threat to business in a way

16:24 Right. It's also silly because we used to have repairmen, repair shops for things I mean even cobblers for shoes people used to have their shoes fixed so they could wear them longer and today We throw away basically everything! I mean...I can't remember- I think the TV repair business is basically gone Appliance Repair it'd be very hard to have that career because we just throw things away now. We just buy the new one I had an experience when I was traveling in India and I saw all these little stalls on the streets, which were basically consistent with like two young people and a tiny table or chair or something. Foldy thing that they would bring in the morning and just set it up somewhere. And they'd have maybe one screwdriver and toothbrush and rag or something. And with that, there would repair anything mobiles, mobile phones

17:15 pieces of electronics, you know like cassette recorders DVD machines or whatever and it's kind of ironic when you go back to Europe or you go to the US and you take something that's damaged back to the shop. And they say oh no it's impossible to repair that can't be done or it's too expensive then you go to the other side of the world to India and there is no problem at all they will try to repair anything It's also quite interesting how you know as we're talking about how to fight against planned obsolescence has some of these skills. coming to Europe now, like in Spain or in France. So you have a lot more electronics shops run by Indians or Pakistanis and whatever and they're bringing these skills to Europe so for instance in Barcelona was one of the co-production countries on the film and you have all these little phone shops and if you go into big department stores, they won't repair mobile phones but all the little phone places have little signs up saying we'll repair phones,

18:13 repair your screens. So in a way, these skills are coming back and maybe that's a good thing." Yeah, that's definitely something to be optimistic about. To contrast the mass production planned obsolescence model in the case of light bulb, how did something like the manufacturing of light bulbs differ in a country like Germany at the time? Well, there is an interesting story between the East and the West. In the communist bloc countries for instance in East Germany they obviously weren't interested in throwing things away quite as often because they were running out of resources all the time and a lot of them had to be bought from the West and they didn't have the resources for that so they were actually a lot more interested in things lasting longer and also you find if I talk to any friend from

19:06 former East, they have repair skills. They know how to repair simple things at home and they know how to make things last it's really amazing it's a different culture and what happened in the 80s is actually that in East Germany they decided to design a longer lasting light bulb and then take it to an international lighting fair And they thought they were going to have people queuing up saying that's really amazing, at last somebody got past those 1000 hours. Theirs lasted 2500 hours and it was made by the National Nava factory and they produced light bulbs for literally practically the entire Eastern Bloc.

19:43 And then nobody wanted to buy this bulb and they kind of got laughed out of the room practically. People were saying, you know, are you completely mad? This is going to cost jobs! You can't think like that...this is not gonna work. The interesting thing was that when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 this factory closed quite quickly. Their products didn't do well on a globalised market but on the other hand if you go to the flea market people are still looking for these bulbs because they have sort of cult value If you know you've got one, you can screw it in a place that's maybe difficult to get to like a really high ceiling or something and you know it's going to last slightly longer. So you can sort of see is actually useful thing and you can see about planned obsolescence

20:25 It's actually stealing our time in a way, because it's making us repair things and go out and buy things. And I know a lot of us we like shopping but also depends what it is. Like I personally for instance don't really enjoy replacing things like printers and electronics that are at home that use for my work but every time you get a new one there something going to be incompatible or you need to reinstall everything You're going to spend time on the customer helpline. You probably need a new ink cartridge, so it's not only about money I think it also keeps us busy. Well said and I do love that part of the documentary where you talk about the contrast between the Western way and the Eastern way

21:11 Another point about Germany that was interesting for the reasons you mentioned their limited resources and stuff like that at the time They actually made minimums like they had refrigerators that had to last 25 years as opposed to a cartel who's saying that no item can last longer than this they had the complete 180 approach and we're trying to force companies hey if you gonna make something better make it well and i need to last at least x amount of years and. That's pretty awesome really from up from the standpoint other people And also this actually came down directly from the government, you know because it was a nationalized industry so you probably had like one major production facility that produced fridges for the entire country or maybe even for several eastern bloc countries and it was like the same design.

22:00 And they knew they didn't have all these materials to squander, so they put the best people on design job saying it's gotta be minimum of that many years. People were also looking forward to that because maybe they'd been actually waiting for this fridge for eight years and maybe had to bribe somebody or share it with somebody you couldn't just go out and buy as many fridges as he liked, so once you got one I think nobody saw the point in making it break artificially. Once they finally had it they were much more focused on on the purpose of that particular machine and what good it could do why you actually needed it. Now I think over the years we've gotten used to thinking in terms like is this good for the economy? Things break and yes there's progress and we need new things

22:49 We don't know it's actually really kind of surreal perverse way of thinking you know putting an engineer. Interlacing do the worst job possible but doing in a way that nobody notices or do it in a way so the item looks really attractive to people by it on it, they will just look at it and not worry about the function and the lifespan. And we seem to sort of think that's normal now. That's true, and it's not like capitalism doesn't have some benefits, but we can't ignore these systemic shortcomings and these unsustainable issues I mean, they've got to be addressed! As far as history goes, I was also fascinated to learn that originally

23:31 Bernard London, he proposed this idea of planned obsolescence as an actual law. They were talking about the potential of having leases on products that the product had to be turned in to be destroyed once it served its life even if it still functioned and of course it never did become a law but this is kind of mindset we're dealing with trying to get this thing going. Of course just refine by making it a marketing thing and then you can say, oh well it's people's choice. It's totally up to them to go get a new one but of course we're heavily manipulated and the marketing is really fine tuned and its kind of psychological warfare to a degree

24:13 In a way, yeah. And the interesting thing is also Bernard London he became famous for this idea but even though he sounds totally purely 100% capitalist he still had some social elements in it at the time because He wrote his book about how to end the depression through planned obsolescence. So he really wanted people to work again and I think Facebook always cues every day, he was living in New York and he was in real estate. He came from Eastern Europe somewhere really poor, he'd come to the States and made a fortune but I think it was also that generation of entrepreneur who wants to give something back so it seemed like a good idea. And at the time they were less worried about waste than way they hadn't seen this huge

24:53 mountains of waste that we create now. And he did have a project that also meant, you know, some of the things that were taken out as circulation by this law where he wants to make they would be available for secondhand market or for poorer people so I think it's very interesting sort of thought experiments but Planned obsolescence is also, it does work for factories and everything will keep moving. But it's not a long-term project because you always end up with more waste and you will end up using a lot more energy and natural resources than you actually have. I mean if something lasts only 1 third of the time then

25:34 I mean, like in the film we shot a sequence that we unfortunately didn't have time for but we talked to designer who explained us the difference between cheap shirt and quality shirts. And he talks about different qualities of cotton and said well this shirt cost 1 third and it has 1 third of lifespan and other one is good quality last longer you know so financially almost same thing except that you have the fun or the burden, whatever. Depends on whether you like shopping that you have to keep replacing them but a cheap shirt will create three times as much waste On the other hand I know jobs is an important consideration but i'm not entirely convinced that this is the only way of keeping in an economy going because now we see some repair businesses are coming back We see also other products which are online which don't actually have a physical object that breaks all the time

26:23 Things could also be designed maybe more in modules so you can update one bit and that's where your market is. You have products like, you know, you can buy people vouchers or invite them for dinner or a trip somewhere or dance class. There's a lot of economic activity that could be created around activities rather than things that break and are made of plastic or cheap materials or whatever. Right I mean, those are great points. And yeah we should be fair and say these guys like Bernard London at the time they were dealing with the Great Depression which was a serious hell on earth. That's obviously a terrible situation to be in so they're very desperate for new ideas to get things moving and keep them moving and keep the cycle going but it's kind of out of control this point but earlier you did mention printers

27:14 as another example, and I love that one too. This is another area where it's very blatant to see what they've done. Tell us a little bit about some of the scams you've seen in the world of inkjet printers, consumer printers? Okay. Well, the interesting thing is that when you look at the light bulb it's... The planned obsolescence has to do with the thickness of the filament in the bulb and then we gradually see planned obsolescence kind of moving a little bit also into our hairs and into fashion And then there's another key moment when it moves into electronics That's in a way where the consumer really loses a lot of power because you have something that's electronic with lots of little chips and if you're not a specialist then you just don't know, you don't know which chip kind of bumps through or whatever. And these things could be programmed so I found this story about this inkjet printer that had a set number of pages and in that... You know i'm not going to tell you the brand because later on we find out a lot of inkjet printers work according to the same principle

28:18 also user manuals and technicians' manuals, where they actually specify the number of pages. Where it will say well this printer's programmed for either that many pages or 5 000 pages or three years whatever happens earlier you know so that sounds quite deliberate to me and then what you find is also people take this big thing maybe to a repair shop and they will say new printers much cheaper So that's one problem. And the other thing is, you know also I was interested actually to prove whether that's true or whether something had really worn out so i took one of these printers and interesting thing is there's a little Russian freeware about either they were saying well we can reprogram the chip so the printer's not really broken. So I went to see a friend of mine who's a computer technician and we installed the little freeware and with that

29:08 raised the number on this little counter and we took it to the top level of pages that you were supposed to be printing. And the printer immediately stopped, and you get this little message on screen saying parts inside your printer have come to end its lifespan or sometimes... It depends on a model, sometimes they don't tell you anything and then any repair technician will say well I didn't even know where the problem is! Then we took the Russian Foo and lowered the number of points again, and suddenly the printer worked again. We hadn't touched any other parts! And then we took it up again and stopped printing and we took it down again... I mean you can do this all day long

29:46 So it's quite clear that the printer wasn't really broken. It was programmed to sync, but it was broken and that was the difference and then of course when you ask the manufacturers they will say either... well we would never do that people would just go buy a rival brand or something but that is exactly the interesting thing A lot of inkjet printers are kind of artificially cheap on the idea so you keep replacing them and then you buy a lot of expensive ink And then the other justification is that they say, well no it's just we're worried that something maybe has broken inside or some of them have a little sponge inside and they're saying well that fills up and then you will get ink stains so it's much better to block it. But on the other hand why don't they then say check your sponge? Or something like that. Why don't they design the printer in a way where you have this flap and you open it and

30:43 And I met another technician, he had a lot of these printers in his company. He was basically in charge of looking after all the printers and big office and he said... He'd actually worked out that with the Russian freeway you kind of every time the printer blocked so you can go back down to zero and the printer would start printing again. You could do that about six times before sponge actually really overflowed So they were playing extremely safe! Far too safe And I think it's a lack of information. The consumer would have the right to know if their savers or part does come to the end of its life somewhere, they should say is it the sponge? Or should you check one some mechanism or something because this lack of information means that you will take it somewhere and then say it's really expensive and not worth it and look at amazing model that we have on offer this week

31:36 and there's another new piece of electronic waste being produced that maybe isn't radio waste. Right. Yeah, it is so ridiculous and there are very few examples that are as blatant as putting a microchip in a printer that just says okay shut off at this point I mean It's it's really just engineered to fail. It's pretty ridiculous and for companies to say oh well There's so much competition we couldn't really be doing this I mean That's just such an easy lie to see through because when you factor in any product, usually there's only two or three or four or five companies that make it. And it's not very hard like we saw in the light bulb example for these companies to get together and create a standard and if everybody follows the rules then the consumer doesn't have a choice that actually works for them

32:25 I think there should be at least a law that would require them to put the lifespan on the label or something. Even if they don't want to run it whole system, whatever, you know, at least we can then do work ourselves and say well that costs that much and it's that many hours and that's twice as much or three times as much because that's part of equation not just looking for fashion and their brands. And nothing...I mean the printer is quite big debate cause lots people sort of then say well printers are so cheap what are you worried about? But I think it's just the principle of not providing that information and getting away with it. And then, the other thing I also found for instance in one of the manuals was instructing technicians saying well if a customer does come in with a printer and he doesn't think is too expensive do change the sponge but then don't put the counter back down to zero put it halfway

33:16 And even though the spand is new, so in theory the lifespan should now be the same. We should go back to 5,000 pages or whatever but I think they were trying to make sure that you come back a little earlier and maybe the second time around you say well i'm not going to do that again this time we'll upgrade So, I think it is quite well thought out and it's part of the whole system. That's the other problem you know? I started making the film and I thought maybe tell a light bulb story and maybe there's printer... And there are few companies who decided to be particularly greedy but then doing more research turned out this whole planned obsolescence thing was actually

33:59 in the whole system and it's part of a whole system. Our gross economy depends on it, not only on that but it's one of the elements. It is a really important part that keeps things moving and it's actually really difficult to get out of it now. I find a lot of the time people rarely say you got it wrong in the documentary about how printer doesn't exist. Usually more ideological objections saying we need it Do you want everyone to be out of work? That usually creates a really, really interesting debate about where are the future jobs and how we deal with waste and all that.

34:39 So, people are very open I think generally. Yeah you don't obviously want to put people out of work but it's like what do we spend our life doing because there is a lot of people out there working for 20 bucks an hour just to keep up with new light bulbs and getting a new printer and all the appliances in their life that are meant to break down your just trying to keep up with that maintain your debt and just stay on the hamster wheel. It's kind of ridiculous when you think about it, just how inefficient the whole process is and how much time like you mentioned earlier it wastes in going to buy these products replace these products but also just the time you spend shackled to a job that you're underpaid at just to kinda stay afloat

35:23 Yeah, there is actually I remember that there was an institute in Germany somewhere they were actually... They were stating in a report that we actually end up working more you know because we need to replace things more often so we need to earn more money. So we need to work more hours and That was quite an interesting idea, you know are we working extra hours because we need all these things and do we need them? And do we need them as often as you know as we think we need them. I think for instance LED bulbs are an interesting example i mean i'm not saying they're like the only solution to the like the upcurtle dilemma or whatever but it's a market where you can see that

35:59 They cost a lot more, but they also last a lot longer and people... A lot of people now have started making that calculation. They look at the lifespan and they also look at the fact that they use less electricity and they're prepared to actually pay more money because they've realized well it's probably about the same you know? And maybe even saves me time so it's not impossible to sell more expensive things that then lasts longer maybe save your time and other things It's something that could be explored, you know. But on the other hand especially with electronics we see at the moment a sort of movement... You know people say we're in when a big crisis and so there are a lot of really cheap things flooding the markets that everyone can have them but the waste is just piling up because none of this lasts very long and it probably can't last very long without anyone who was going to make any money is true if he follow this I was almost like a pyramid scheme yeah

36:48 Absolutely. And there's a real parallel there, like you mentioned earlier with the clothing quality example that more expensive quality clothing just costs more because they know you're not going to be buying it as often so your kind of buying like four shirts wrapped up into one that are gonna last as long as those four cheap shirts might have lasted It's just so ridiculous but are there other good examples of planned obsolescence? That maybe didn't make into the movie that people might be interested in and interested you Well, there is one actually that isn't a movie and which I really like. It's about tights and stockings. A lot of us women are interested in because if you talk to women the age of your grandmother or whatever they will tell you that this was a really important issue at the time because you couldn't really just go out without tights or stockings. That was kind of seen as indecent and if he wanted to be elegant he had to wear them but

37:44 But on the other hand, they would snag all the time and run ladders. And this would then happen in the middle of a party and then girls... A lady told us that she got a ladder in the middle of her party and then she said, you know I couldn't dance for the rest of evening because people would have seen the ladder. And then of course he had silk stockings were particularly nice but they were also very fragile it was complete disaster maybe spend part of your wages on that and it was a constant problem. Then suddenly they invented nylon and tried nylon for stockings and it went really well

38:20 In the film, we're interviewing the daughter of one of her chemists who was involved at that time and she said well she remembers when her father came home and you brought some sort of test stockings because the idea was like okay well they look fine but you take them home everybody and give them to your wives and girlfriends and see whether they like them. At that time there were quite thick and also had a funny color kind of green or something. They were just looking at their chemical structure about moment And the feedback was, well these are great. They're going to last I can stop worrying and don't need to buy them all the time and that's exactly when this sort of thinking kicked in again that we saw with the light bulb in 20s you know thinking well then all the women are gonna buy one pair of nylon stockings and that's the end of it because then for the next 10 years maybe they won't buy any unless the end of this new invention and invested in it so there sent the same

39:11 engineers back into the lab saying, well can you make them a bit more fragile? And then if you think about it, if you buy tights now and lots of them that the cheaper ones don't even last today. You get them for one job interview or one particular occasion and they're putting... A lot of them, they didn't survive a lot of washes are really, really fragile. That's another story I thought was It's really, really interesting. Oh yeah! Thanks DuPont but it's so frustrating to realize something as simple as nylons or light bulbs they're just nowhere near as efficient as they could be it's something that just really irks me I hate to see such inefficiency but let me ask you how do you think the world would be different if everything was designed to be the best it could be what can we do about this cycle? Or how to change it

40:04 Well, also I think it depends on the definition of best. And then I think it depends on the product. It makes perfect sense to have your winter socks designed whatever the best way they could be because like you know it's not something we enjoy buying for fun so there is no reason to kind of buy them every two months if they could last for a year or something just to come up with an example In the same way, it doesn't make sense to build a computer that lasts for absolutely ever and ever and ever because it's an industry that progresses. So it makes sense that a chair is sturdy and it lasts and it doesn't collapse if you sit down on it but it doesn't quite make as much sense if you're talking about technology that's evolving all the time but in this case I think

40:52 design that could be considered best and maybe wouldn't be one that's really long lasting. It could be one, you know which is more easily updated or repaired where you can add new modules like we've seen projects for mobile phones where you design yourself the combination of functions and you kind of get different modules that you combine. And then if one of them breaks, he can change just that one and not the whole thing because nobody wants a computer 20 years, you know? So maybe there should be a way of updating at least once. And then also maybe if it is something that's progressing a lot, maybe design it in a way so it's much more easy to actually recycle and use don't not use all these really toxic materials

41:40 So it doesn't quite make quite as much damage when it goes, you know into the recycling system and that's for instance when ideas come into like you know cradle to cradle or whatever these are people basically saying if If you can take it apart really easily at the end and it's not toxic, then you can just put it back into the system. It's like if you have some metal somewhere, you melt again and you put it into a new version of the same product and he goes round and round and then it actually doesn't matter if you change every month or whatever. What is a problem as if it breaks on any have huge mountains of toxic waste and you don't know what to do with all that In the meantime, there's more and more and more being produced all the time. A laptop has hundreds of toxic ingredients and each of these ingredients actually attacks a different part of your body when it gets into the air or when it gets to your lungs or it gets into the water

42:30 you know, these things they're not harmless. You know they might affect your lungs or it might affect your nervous system and some of them are quite serious. A lot of the time there's no way of actually getting them out and separating them and isolating them once they've been produced about so in that case that would be an argument really for using that computer for as long as possible because once it has been produced then it is in a way... It has a dangerous afterlife than should be used for as long as he can at least sort of worth it in a way Mm-hmm. Absolutely extend the life of the product so the benefits can at least start to try to compare the costs later

43:07 It is a great point about the poisonous components that make up our products. I've had some guests that take this all the way back to hemp and the threat to the textile industry, That would have been just another natural effective renewable alternative that people could have had and even made their own products from but instead everything was moved over to these complex plastics and oil-based stuff and chemicals Thanks to Rockefeller and company. But yeah, with laptops and smartphones I hear a lot about the concerns with the mining operations for these components And also that they aren't great for people in certain parts of the process especially like you mentioned after we throw them out

43:47 And of course, the digital waste of the modern age does get us into your second film The E-Waste Tragedy. It is a great extension of the planned obsolescence topic because it really is the fallout from this practice and to get into that a little bit deeper, it is pretty appropriate part two to the story right? Yeah, so in a way when I was making the first part. I was sort of thinking well what is the problem with planned obsolescence? You know because it does career jobs and factories keep going and so the idea was to find a story that would be an example for this sort of dance we have and show that this isn't a long-term project really or something that maybe worked really well in their 20's 30's 50's whatever

44:29 And that's when I heard about this dump site of electronic waste in Ghana. This is where a lot of computers end up, it looks like it was always like a big field. It's basically a space that...it was green next to river and people used to fish there and then people started sort of dumping e-waste there and you get young people taking things apart and they burn them. You know, it's really rudimentary so their health really suffers The interesting thing is also you see the labels on these machines, because a lot of the time things get recycled and you still got these tags on them. So you know who they belong to or like big companies when they have the same computer on every desk, a lot of the time it'll have a logo so...

45:08 So you can see these in Ghana, you can see from the States specifically especially a lot of public institutions, a lot of hospitals and military computers. They still all have their tags so it's quite clear where they come from. We filmed a little sequence showing this is where the waste goes if something has a short lifespan will become waste more quickly and this is one of places that goes to and they don't really have the means to recycle properly And the interesting thing was that people really reacted a lot to that sequence. It was three minutes showing their dump size and how dangerous it is to people's health, and then people were saying well how do they actually get there? You know why do they need to go to Ghana

45:51 And this kind of got me onto the question, you know in Europe for instance we have a very detailed recycling system. So you know the European Union has designed a system that if you buy a piece of electronics The purchase price includes the cost of recycling so for instance like a fridge they will add 20 euros So you pay the recycling in advance and they use that money to set up a recycling system. And, you know, they have recycling plants, they have collecting points where you can hand these things in and the idea is like, you know, the money's already there and the know-how has also already been on the technology also to make sure all this is treated properly at the end so it was really no reason for us to go to Africa or anything like that but of course

46:37 The system doesn't really work because this money is charged up front. So if a computer doesn't go to the official system, corrupt recycler could take the computer or the fridge and say I'm going to use that money that was paid in advance and I can recycle it properly but then they don't do it. They will sell it to Africa or they will sell it to China and that means they can actually get paid twice once from the recycling system and once from the buyer And the problem with that is really there's so much e-waste that it's impossible to control the quantities. You can very easily fill up a whole container with all this and send into Africa and really make quite a lot of money, and that is very tempting especially with shipping containers going back and forth every minute of the day. So there's a lot of cheap space to be had to transport things

47:29 So I was trying to work out really, to answer that question why does it go to Ghana if we have recycling plants? And the answer is it's very tempting for some people to divert that money. Right and then you know you have other countries in the US, you know the U.S doesn't even have like a whole federal e-waste law so it's not even illegal to export from the U.S and that means it's really easy to fill up containers In the film, for instance we talked to BAND of the Basel Action Network. We would like the international convention to be applied that you shouldn't export anything toxic. You know, you shouldn't recycle in your own country and if you have the facilities... And they actually follow the waste from the US and find a lot goes to China and some of it goes to Africa. It looks like this is really far away but

48:21 In the long term, it means all these materials, metals whatever things you can recuperate they are lost. Then also you get a lot of places which get contaminated and that will come back to all of us in the end I don't think we can send it far away enough that will never impact on anyone there's always going to be somebody getting sick. It is really sad to see just the mountains of garbage, the old tube televisions old 1995 computers and iPods these mountains of garbage, it's really hard for these third world nations to kind of get ahead when the whole rest of the developed world is using them as a garbage can. I loved the details in the documentary just the fact that this whole infrastructure and these recycling centers is all set up and people...the consumers are paying for it in advance but these companies just hire third party recycling companies

49:16 And they don't ask questions. It's just like a out of sight, out of mind thing and these third party companies that are willing to dispose of stuff illegally and just dump it in another Third World country they can offer cheaper prices, so of course they're gonna get the contract. So it's this big wink-wink nod-nod thing like where no one is really holding them accountable but just like you say in the film at the beginning, the e-waste trafficking situation is bigger than the drug trade I mean that's obviously pretty big Can you give us an idea about true scope for the problem? Well, obviously it's difficult to count each piece because if you look at the customs declarations they're never going... Nobody puts illegal e-waste. They put plastics, they put recycled material that will claim that the computers are still working

50:05 So you have to kind of work it the other way around. For instance, if you look at how many electronic gadgets have been sold and then you look at how many ever make it to the recycling system then you can see that rest has disappeared and that gives you an idea. That is about two thirds to 75% at the moment which disappears which doesn't arrive at the other end in a in an authorized facility But of course, it doesn't mean that 75% of our debts fridges or whatever go to Ghana because some of them they end up scrap dealers in Europe or in the US. They ended up with companies who recycle in that particular country but they're not doing well because their money is basically in

50:50 You do it as cheaply as you can. For instance, if you take a fridge and just take off the metal at the back and sell that then you don't deal with toxic bits because we're supposed to use money that you can make from selling good bits to treat other bits that are dangerous really. And if you say that then you put your money in your pocket really. So some countries I think they export up to 10%. But I think a lot of the other things, well some of them would be sitting in people's garages. We all have an old mobile phone somewhere or two we probably have a TV somewhere in the guest room you know so there are things which are kind of on their way to becoming e-waste which is also quite worrying thinking well they haven't even started traveling yet and who knows where they're going to go?

51:35 And the other problem is sort of it's in the system really, like for instance in the US even the government sometimes ends up recycling badly not necessarily maybe because that's the intention you know of the civil servant dealing with it but the taxpayer is not supposed to be burdened so if someone rings up saying I'm a recycler and I have a really good offer this week I think a lot of institutions oblige to take the best offer. But on the other hand, it's actually really suspicious if someone says they'll recycle for free or will give you money for your old computers and you know they're not going... You can be fairly sure that they are not going to do it properly. They probably are going to export because there is no way

52:14 they can do a proper job, you know. Recycling safely costs money. Exactly! So if you have an on-computer, you probably should pay for that and you have when you bought it in Europe at least so someone says I give you money for your own computer that really you should probably check them out and turn down their offer until you've checked them out Right. And some numbers I grabbed from the movie that were pretty shocking in terms of the U.S waste is that about 9.5 million tons a year comes from the US to the rest of the world and then 20-50 shipping containers leave the US every day, I mean that is a lot of garbage but you know we talked about

52:59 the fact that even if there are international laws, they just circumvent them. But there is an agreement that most of the nations of the world have signed with the exception of the US right? Yeah, let me elaborate on that. I mean there's a convention called the Basel Convention and that basically says that you shouldn't export any toxic waste if you have a facility in your own country. If you don't... Let's say you have some really dangerous nuclear waste and the country next to you has the best plant then yes, you can export it but you need to do all of the paperwork and it should really go there But it does mean, for instance that the US shouldn't export e-waste because they are recycling facilities and certainly shouldn't go to Ghana where there aren't any. So that's the sort of thing that the Basel Convention is prohibiting

53:45 And while the US is the only industrialized country that hasn't ratified it. So, you know they did sign it but it was never made into federal law so at the moment we have a sort of patchwork situation like each U.S state probably recycles some things but its organized in different ways and then some states are really difficult to recycle printers because no one's going to pay for an old printer than other places computers are well-organized by maybe with fridges you have to drive really fast So there's not really a unified system and then what happens is you get also people sort of organizing charity events, saying bring your own computers and we'll sell them and recycle them and give money to charity.

54:27 People then are really happy to come with all their old gadgets and people turn up with whole car loads full of things that they have in a garage. And then if that particular state, if they're slightly more strict about it when you just go to harbor somewhere else and ship it from there... The problem is the quantities. You can't open every single container because apart from these containers we also have lots of legitimate containers and billions of containers traveling every day and it's physically impossible to open them all, you know. But from the US there is a lot of material leaving and ban they did this sort of tracking

55:04 And they found even, you know, cyclists with a good reputation that were exporting through the back door. And then the thing that shocks me is always there's a lot of computers I come from government institutions. So when we were filming in Hong Kong and the new territories, we actually found even a laptop from the EPA, you know, that's the Environmental Protection Agency. So, and I presume they've done the same thing, got some offers in and took the best offer that particular company had a contact in Hong Kong and then that's where it ended up. So I think it's important, the whole thing that yeah the taxpayer shouldn't be burdened but in this particular case it's not a good thing for recycling and makes it really difficult to do it

55:51 properly. The other thing is, that's a story I didn't unfortunately have space for in the film but there was an issue also around military equipment you know that supposed to be recycled in the US because these are sensors technology and security at stake it was also very expensive so you get situations where the military needs to recycle some highly sensitive equipment. And in one case, they went to a recycler and they had to... Well, they did sign a contract that it was supposed to be recycled there and absolutely nowhere else. And then suddenly, you know, the chips from that equipment started turning up in China and people

56:32 people started saying, oh well you're the Chinese don't know how to copy anything isn't that amazing? And then it's like well no these chips got to China because that particular US recycle actually took the money from the military and then they chipped it and they sold it to China anyway. So again, someone got paid twice for the work and there was really risky because now this is sort of really elaborate military chips on the free market so to speak you have all these websites where you can buy any chip you like. For instance during my research for the film I was

57:09 Talk to an expert on how do you know if a chip is safe or even if it's working properly. We went on one of these many, many websites where you can buy chips and we put out a request for a chip that doesn't actually exist. And we immediately got offers! It was really amazing the mailbox filled up with people saying yeah how many do you want? When do you want them? And basically what's happening now is when e-waste goes abroad, all the chips get taken out and then they clean them up and polish them up. They might end up in the rain or in the sun at high temperatures you don't know whether they're working There's a lot of faking going on also if I order chip that it's more expensive

57:53 And then what they actually just recycle from a whole truckload of computers, well that does change the label on it and sell me that chip as the one I wanted. And this is maybe if you have a mobile phone that kind of has some mysterious error and it keeps switching off or something, that's not dangerous but if a chip like that ends up in public transport or something then that is dangerous so... So, you know recycling has to be done responsibly and if you have a world where it's all about money money money then that responsibly goes out the window. We talked with some investigators who said they'd actually had a tram catching fire because

58:33 One of the chips kind of burnt out because it wasn't actually made for that sort of temperature But they've kind of put a new label on it. That was saying yes, you can You know doesn't matter if this gets hot and this chip is much more expensive If you know that's why they put that label on it man Wow, well Cosima again a great one-two punch with these two films an in depth look at some serious problems that need addressing and should make us think about how we can make our system better and more sustainable. So thanks for that! And thanks for being here Can you tell the people where they can watch these films online or any other links or information? You might want to give them

59:11 Well, the Lightbulb Conspiracy you can get at The Video Project if you go online and you might find it in your library or you can come to our Facebook page which is facebook.com the light bulb conspiracy all together no dots whatever and if you send me a message then I'm the one who's reading the message on that page You've got the same as the E-Waste film facebook.com e-waste tragedy You can send me a message. I'm also still doing screenings and festivals, sometimes at universities. That's the best place to find them. Right on! Well thanks again so much and keep fighting the good fight out there. Thank you very much. You got it

59:54 Alright boys and girls, Cosima Danneritzer. Big thanks to her! This was sort of a self-serving episode because I've been a big fan of the lightbulb conspiracy for a couple years so I tracked her down and she agreed to come on And these might not be very epic issues in the grand scheme of things but they are issues Just extrapolate out from something as simple as a light bulb...I think we all know that rot runs really deep And of course the e-waste. Definitely check out her documentaries if you're interested in going deeper into these things I also like the section where we talked about the whole communist eastern bloc thing going on and we discussed the German practices making things to last and maximizing efficiency We've talked about similar thing before with socialized medicine that when you remove that profit motive they don't want you to keep coming back like a car mechanic

1:00:47 They actually want to heal you, send you home and get on with their day because they're not getting paid by volume or from shady pharmaceutical companies that are just breaking them off commissions for selling them drugs that they really don't know what's in them. They only know what the pharmaceutical reps tell them and that might be a biased opinion but anyway It's just interesting. I'm not saying, I'm a communist and that I want the system to assign us all factory jobs just so we can have better light bulbs but it is just an idea worth talking about and looking at some of the ways it might have been more efficient

1:01:23 We don't have to be scared of ideas or overly paranoid about, hey wait a minute that sounds like X or Y and those are bad. They're just systems. Just other ways things have been done that we might've forgotten about or haven't heard talked about in a fair and rational non-propaganda driven way. So I hope you liked it but in other news if you want to see more Greg Carlwood I did do two extra things last week that you can check out online. First, you guys know I love the comedy world and a pretty prominent comic Sam Tripoli started a podcast called Tinfoil Hat and i was lucky enough to be a guest recently it's in video which some people keep asking me to do things on video so check this out

1:02:09 And I'd appreciate it if you did because I talked to Sam about maybe doing some conspiracy comedy crossover stuff. So, if you check it out let him know if you liked it and maybe I can elbow my way into working with some comics as the resident conspiracy guy! I would love to do that on the side You get more content, I get friends and opportunities to leave the house Go to YouTube and just look for Tin Foil Hat Greg Carlwood Also another strange release for me, but there is a YouTube show called Hot Ones that I really like where Sean Evans sits down with celebrities and asks them 10 questions over the course of eating 10 hot wings of increasing hotness. Well, I wanted to try it But I know I'm not on the level of being on The Real Show So I just bought the hot sauces and had my hot sauce connoisseur friend Anthony host a Q&A with me as we ate the wings

1:03:01 We were drinking a little drink, smoking a little smoke and just hanging out with a bunch of people. But if you have any interest in watching me throw up in my mouth and cry a little bit it's a fun watch definitely check out the real show too because it is so much better I just had some people over for a poker game so before that we knocked out the Hot Wing Challenge and it was pretty great to have a live studio audience complete with a natural laugh track. So big thanks to everyone who was there for that but you can watch it on the Higher Side Chat's YouTube channel and its kind of fun! Just two random other things I did if you want to put a face to The Voice or are looking to fill some time between THC episodes then you've already seen the whole 7 seasons of Dance Moms

1:03:43 But that's this episode, I hope you liked it. My fiancé listened to it and she took some of these issues to heart She had a folding makeup bag thing and it ripped And instead of throwing it away she got out a needle and thread and she stitched that bitch up Because our throwaway culture was on the forefront of her mind So we're making a difference one makeup bag at a time You know it is interesting because if we all fixed one thing instead of throwing it away this week that would be tens of thousands of items and thats kinda cool. We might not be fixing computers but less waste is a good thing overall and dumping our trash in the third world

1:04:23 That ain't right. And it isn't a left or right issue, it's just a shitty thing that our culture does and maybe we can be a little less shitty and a little more conscious of it and contribute to it a little less As always, we give you a commercial free hour just because I'm such a great man and we have a second hour if you'd like to go deeper into all the great episodes we do for that $5 monthly subscription In the second hour of this episode we get into Seattle's toxic ash dumping scandal, the pros and cons of class action lawsuits. The extent to the health problems that e-waste causes We talk about the move away from independence granting skills in school and culture laws and regulation differences around the world that are quite telling of the systems they're instituted in Oh! The expected resource crisis of 2030 That's coming down the pike

1:05:14 And of course, leading ideas for a more sustainable system. All good stuff! Sign up if you want to double your THC fun and support the ongoing journey into the un-talked about That said I'm getting out of here i've done my part Your move lightbulb nerfers and printer breakdown planners YOUR FUCKING MOVE Well they tie that young ribbon round the oak tree They've worn out all the prayer in their heart All along thought they were rooting for the home team As they're sent to the game and torn apart We twist this tourniquet upon the pipeline That it carries all the pain and the worry

1:06:07 As we blindly clap and cheer from the sidelines It's clear Arnold was intrigued from the very start And that's where they found me In a cemetery A smoking gun in my hand I'm down for the end of the free THC The American scream They took that faded ribbon off the oak tree. They've worn out all the hope in their arms. For so long I thought i was doing the right thing, Now im lying in a pool of my blood And thats where they found me In the cemetery A smoking gun in my hand from the land of the free

1:07:26 Sing with me And that's where they found me In my cemetery A smoking guy in my ear Now I'm down from the land of the free THC The American scream! American scream! And that's where they found me, in my cemetery