Three times in the past week I was subjected to consumption topics regarding our society's need to throw things away rather than repair them.
I don't know why that is, but it definitely led me to subject you to some of my own thoughts on the topic after hearing from the experts.
We have the new Millenial generation that our Trader columnist J.Baker writes so eloquently about this coming weekend. They have followed the Generation X, Y and Z's. I, unfortunately, am one of those ubiquitous Baby Boomers who defy the logistical mind set of the Millenials. We have them baffled with B.S. They have no idea where we're coming from, and quite frankly, neither one of us really care.
So today's populations, at least in the First World countries, simply want to throw out the old when it no longer works, and buy a new one, the next generation of whatever it is, because it will be so much better, cleaner, newer and generally neat to have.
So I heard about a Turkish man who has set up a nano repair shop in Regina that actually repairs broken cell phones. He said it's part of his culture not to throw things away without first seeing if they can be repaired. There are line-ups at his business. The consumer has discovered that she doesn't have to throw the cellphone out after it's been run over, dropped in the sink or toilet or thrown into the bushes. Everything can be recovered, even if the motherboard has been damaged, he said. That's the big feature. New phone means you have to redo all your stuff you want programmed. Old phone, everything is restored for $100 and can be transposed to a new apparatus later.
Next was a watchmaker who said he's teaching a class of 27 young people how to repair old and new watches from the windup models to the digitals.
Again, people who have owned the old get attached to them, especially the classic time pieces. They discover they are worth keeping and using.
But we don't seek out television repair journeypersons anymore do we? Nope, we junk the old screen and get a new one. Same with computers.
While on a trip last winter I ran into an interesting woman in the Washington airport who was on her way to Oman to be a materials manager for a U.S.-based equipment company. She was from the south and had recently completed a 12-year career in the military where she had been an officer in charge of not only men and women, but a lot of equipment that was being used in the harsh environments of Afghanistan.
"The young bucks would come back to base without a particular piece of equipment, or even a vehicle and they'd head over to the supply depot and expect to just take a new one off the palette. I'd stop them and make them bring in the used one, the broken one, the one they left out there. They didn't like that, especially when it was 46 degrees," she said with a laugh. But if there was no danger involved in the process, that's what they did. And when they brought it back, they had to take it apart and fix it, she said. If it was not repairable then they were issued a new one. But first they had that educational opportunity to learn the inner workings of the stuff they thought they could just throw away, leaving it out in the dessert.
She said by taking this cost-effective route, she probably saved the U.S. army tens of thousands of dollars during her deployment. She chuckled and said she didn't want to know how many billions of dollars had been wasted by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, but she felt good about her 12-person unit. Smarter troops, restored equipment.
I figured she'd make a good materials manager for her new company.
Being one who knows next to nothing about mechanical workings of anything more complicated than a pair of scissors, I can appreciate how important it is to learn how things run and maybe not everything that doesn't work has to be thrown out.
