“Designed for the dump” sounds crazy, right? But when you’re trying to sell lots of stuff, it makes perfect sense. It’s a key strategy of the companies that make our electronics. In fact, it’s a key part of our whole unsustainable materials economy. “Designed for the dump” means making stuff to be thrown away quickly. Today’s electronics are hard to upgrade, easy to break and impractical to repair. My DVD player broke and I took it to a shop to have it fixed. The repair guy wanted 50 dollars just to look at it. A new one at target cost 39 bucks. 

 

 

 

In the 1960s, Gordon Moore, the giant brain and semiconductor pioneer, predicted that electronics designers could double processor speed every 18 months. So far, he’s been right. This is called Moore’s Law. But somehow the bosses of these genius designers got it all twisted up. They seemed to think that Moore’s Law means every 18 months we have to throw out our old electronics and buy more. Problem is, the 18 months that we use these things are just a blip in their entire lifecycle. And that’s where these dump designers aren’t just causing a pain in our wallets. They’re causing a globe toxicant emergence. You see, electronics start where most stuff starts, in mines and factories. Many of our gadgets are made from a thousand different materials, shipped from around the world to assembly plants. There, workers turn them into products, using loads of toxic chemicals, like PVC, mercury, solvents and flame retardants. Today, this usually happens in far-off places that are hard to monitor. But it used to happen in my home, in Silicon Valley, which thanks to the electronic industry is one of the most poisoned communities in the U.S.