FEBRUARY 29 2020 LISTENER 11
BACK TO BLACK
Spoiling by choice
I am fed up
with planned
obsolescence
and ourthrowaway
culture.T
his time last year, I was living
in a quiet, leafy suburb just
outside Washington DC. Some
days, few vehicles passed along
our street and of those that did, about
half were the dark-brown UPS deliv-
ery vans used by Amazon.
Ours was one of the places they
came to frequently because my hus-
band had an Amazon Prime account- almost guaranteed 1-2 day deliv-
ery on pretty much anything that
anyone who lives on the right side of
the law could need. To me, it seemed
like an endless supply of bike inner
tubes, Asian-cooking ingredients
and books. Harmless,
except they all came to
the house in a truck. It
felt wrong, but when I
demurred, my husband
would ask if I would
feel better if he drove
to the shops to pick
the items up and drove
home again. Fair point.
But there’s more
that’s unsettling about
Amazon than just its
emissions. The compa-
ny’s founder, Jeff Bezos,
is a brilliant entrepre-
neur. A person can sit
with their phone, see
something they like on,
say, social media, find
it on Amazon, click
once to pay and it will
be delivered, possibly
Better than vilifying
polluting companies,
a look in the mirror
might suffice.
A
LE
X
SC
O
TT“Apparently the blue tit and the blue-footed booby
were both named by the same six-year-old.”the same day, to their home. If you think that does
not happen, you are wrong. It happens thousands,
maybe tens of thousands of times a day in the US.
Amazon allows near-instant gratification. Don’t
think, do it. You want it? Have it.
The Guardian no longer accepts ads from fossil-
fuel companies, as though it is the companies that
burn the fossil fuel. They do not. They enable the
rest of us to choose to burn it, in the same way that
Amazon does not use or consume the millions of
products it delivers every day. Rather, it enables us,
the consumers, to choose to do so. The same argu-
ment applies to airlines. We act as though we do
not have choices, but we do.
Bezos has just announced a whumping US$
billion fund in his name to fight climate change.
Good on him, but this all feels so circular that
surely we are eating our own tails.T
he door on our oven at home does not shut
properly so a bloke from an oven-door-not-
shutting-properly company came to have
a look.
He was friendly as he did that thing that Iassume they teach tradespeople to do
at tradespeople training school. The
kind of, “Ah, yes, I see the problem
and if only x situation applied, this
would be straightforward but, unfor-
tunately, it’s y situation, which will
be trickier [read: more expensive].”
The oven is small and does not look
old, but it is an unusual brand.
He would see if the correct hinges
could be procured. Otherwise, he
would look for a substitute. I thought
he meant substitute hinges.
My husband took a call from the
oven-door-not-shutting-properly
company. Alas, they had been unable
to procure the hinges, but they had
found a substitute. It would be “seven
six four nine”.
“You mean $76.49,” my husband
asked, “for the hinges?” No. They
meant $7649 for a new oven.
Because I am calm and rational,
my immediate response was to want
to live in the bush
and cook over an
open fire because I am
fed up with planned
obsolescence and our
throwaway culture.
Upon reflecting that,
in truth, the closest I
get to cooking on an
open fire is lighting
vanilla-scented candles,
I stayed home.
The door problem is
not that big a deal and,
to be honest, I person-
ally do not spend a lot
of time in front of a
stove, whether the door
shuts tightly or not.
Now, I need only to
remind myself that we
have not just “saved”
$7649. lJOANNE
BLACK
IN WELLINGTON